got three bunches. The size of the crackers depressed us considerably
for they were the smallest we had ever seen. We feared they would not
make any noise. We put them away in a safe place. Brother was a natural
investigator. Every time I was gone, he would fear those crackers were
not keeping well and try one. He wanted no grand disappointment on the
Fourth.

Joe Bemis, son of Dr. Bemis, always trained with us fellows and never
backed down. We were going to have a circus in the barn. Joe said, "I'll
ride a hog." The hogs were running around loose outside. They were as
wild as deer. We laid a train of corn into the barn and so coaxed one
old fellow with great tusks into it, and then closed the door. Joe ran
and jumped on his back. Like lightning the hog threw him and then ripped
him with his tusk. Joe yelled, "For God's sake let him out." We did. We
laid Joe out on a board and Dr. Bemis came and sewed him up. He said,
"Joe won't ride a hog very soon again, boys. Neither will you, I guess."

Mr. Charles Rye--1853.

Mr. Rye, eighty-six years old, hale and hearty, who still chops down
large trees and makes them into firewood for his own use, says:

I left England in a sailing vessel in 1851 and was five weeks on the
voyage. My sister did not leave her bunk all the way over and I was
squeamish myself, but I see the sailors drinking seawater every morning,
so I joined them and was never sick a minute after. We brought our own
food with us and it was cooked for us very well and brought to us hot.
We did not pay for this but we did pay for any food furnished extra.
Some ships would strike good weather all the way and then could make a
rapid voyage in three weeks, but usually it took much longer. I stayed
in the east two years and came to St. Anthony in 1853.

The best sower in our part of England taught me to sow grain. After
three days he came to me and said, "Rye, I don't see how it is, but I
can see you beat me sowing." I hired out to sow grain at $1.00 a day as
soon as I came here and had all the work I could do. I would put the
grain, about a bushel of it, in a canvas lined basket, shaped like a
clothes basket and fastened with straps over my shoulders, then with a
wide sweep of the arm, I would sow first with one hand and then with the
other. It was a pretty sight to see a man sowing grain. Seemed like he
stepped to music.

Once I saw twenty-five deer running one after another like Indians
across my sister's fa