and
soon revised my first estimate of their character. All those people cut
fine farms out of the heavy timber and died rich.

The first settlers were mostly Americans, from New York and New England;
but before leaving the old farm we used to hear of English, Irish,
Dutch, Norwegian, and Welsh settlements. The latter people enveloped and
overflowed our own particular community and came to form a good portion
of the population.

Besides the numerous nationalities on this front edge of advancing
settlement, there were people of many and diverse individualities--the
uneasy, the unlucky, the adventurous, the men without money but full of
hope, the natural hunters, the trappers, the lovers of woods and
solitudes, and occasionally one who had left his country for his
country's good; all these classes were represented. But on the whole the
frontier's people were an honest, kindly, generous class, ready to help
in trouble or need of any kind.

If there was sickness, watchers by the bedside and harvesters in the
field were promptly forthcoming. If a new house or barn was to be
raised, every available man came. If a cow was mired, and such was often
the case, her owner easily got all the help he wanted. Husking and
logging and quilting bees were common, and in the autumn there were bees
for candle-dipping, when the family supply of candles would be made for
a year; and all such events would of course be followed by a supper, and
perhaps a frolic. Visits among the women folk were all-day affairs; if
the husbands were invited, it would be of an evening, and the call then
would last till midnight with a supper at ten. There was a word of
comfort and good cheer in those forest homes. I doubt if any child in
modern palaces enjoys happier hours than were mine on winter evenings,
when I rested on the broad stone hearth in front of the big fireplace,
with its blazing four-foot log, the dog on one side and the cat on the
other, while my father told stories that had to be repeated as the stock
ran out, and I was gradually lulled to sleep by the soft thunder of my
mother's spinning wheel. What could be more luxurious for any youngster?

I remember that when I was about six I saw my first apple. Half of it
came to me, and I absorbed it as if to the manor born. What a revelation
it was to a lad who could be satisfied with choke-cherries and crab
apples! In those times, when a visitor called it was common to bring out
a dish of well-washe