attention, rest, and care, the wound would have
soon healed up, but owing to lack of skill, and to carelessness and
exposure, the wound gave him considerable trouble, and once reopened.
In after-life, when overwearied, this part of the limb was very
troublesome.

It was not all toil for Carleton. The time of love had already come,
and the days of marriage were not far off. The object of his devotion
was Miss Sally Russell Farmer, the daughter of Colonel John Farmer, of
Boscawen. On February 18, 1846, amid the winter winds, the fire of a
holy union for life was kindled, and its glow was unflickering during
more than fifty years. In ancestry and relationship, the Farmers of
Boscawen were allied with the Russells of England,--Sir William, of
bygone centuries, and Lord John, of our own memory. Carleton found a
true "help-meet" in Sally Coffin. Though no children ever came to
bless their union, it was as perfect, though even more hallowed and
beautified, on the day it was severed, as when first begun.

The following summer was one full of days of toil in the engineering
department of the Northern railway, Carleton being engaged upon the
first section to be opened from Concord to Franklin. The engineering
was difficult, and the work heavy. Breakfast was eaten at six in the
morning, and dinner wherever it could be found along the road. Seldom
could the young engineer rise from his arithmetical calculations until
midnight.

Weary with such exacting mental and physical labor, he resigned his
position, and became a contractor. First he supplied the Concord
railroad with 200,000 feet of lumber, which he purchased at the
various mills. This venture being profitable, he engaged in the lumber
trade, furnishing beams for a large factory, timber for a new railway
station at Concord, and for a ship at Medford. It was while
transacting some business in Lowell, that he saw President Polk, James
Buchanan, Levi Woodbury, and other political magnates of the period,
who, however, were rather coldly received on account of the annexation
of Texas, and war with Mexico.

Wishing for a home of his own, Carleton now bought a farm in West
Boscawen, and began housekeeping in the following November. He carried
on extensive lumber operations, hiring a large number of men and
teams. He rose between four and five in the morning, and was in the
woods, four miles away, at sunrise, working through the day, and
reaching home after dark to care for the