r and began to improve it.

"You've had lonesome days enough, mother," he said to his wife. "We'll
live here in the village. I'll buy some good, young niggers if I can,
and build a house for 'em, and go back and forth in the saddle."

The best families had negro slaves which were, in the main, like
Abraham's servants, each having been born in the house of his master.
They were regarded with affection.

It was a peaceful, happy, mutually helpful, God-fearing community in
which the affairs of each were the concern of all. Every summer day,
emigrants were passing and stopping, on their way west, towing bateaux
for use in the upper waters of the Mohawk. These were mostly Irish and
German people seeking cheap land, and seeing not the danger in wars to
come.

There is an old letter from John Irons to his sister in Braintree which
says that Jack, of whom he had a great pride, was getting on famously
in school. "But he shows no favor to any of the girls, having lost his
heart to a young English maid whom he helped to rescue from the
Indians. We think it lucky that she should be far away so that he may
better keep his resolution to be educated and his composure in the
task."

The arrival of the mail was an event in Albany those days. Letters had
come to be regarded there as common property. They were passed from
hand to hand and read in neighborhood assemblies. Often they told of
great hardship and stirring adventures in the wilderness and of events
beyond the sea.

Every week the mail brought papers from the three big cities, which
were read eagerly and loaned or exchanged until their contents had
traveled through every street. Benjamin Franklin's _Pennsylvania
Gazette_ came to John Irons, and having been read aloud by the fireside
was given to Simon Grover in exchange for Rivington's _New York Weekly_.

Jack was in a coasting party on Gallows Hill when his father brought
him a fat letter from England. He went home at once to read it. The
letter was from Margaret Hare--a love-letter which proposed a rather
difficult problem. It is now a bit of paper so brittle with age it has
to be delicately handled. Its neatly drawn chirography is faded to a
light yellow, but how alive it is with youthful ardor:

"I think of you and pray for you very often," it says. "I hope you
have not forgotten me or must I look for another to help me enjoy that
happy fortune of which you have heard? Please tell me truly. My
fath