'tend to business. You tackle yer mother and chase her up and down the
hills a while and let me get my breath."

Samson's diary tells how, at the top of the long, steep hills he used to
cut a small tree by the roadside and tie its butt to the rear axle and
hang on to its branches while his wife drove the team. This held their
load, making an effective brake.

Traveling through the forest, as they had been doing for weeks, while the
day waned, they looked for a brookside on which they could pass the night
with water handy. Samson tethered, fed and watered their horses, and
while Sarah and the children built a fire and made tea and biscuits, he
was getting bait and catching fish in the stream.

"In a few minutes from the time I wet my hook a mess of trout would be
dressed and sizzling, with a piece of salt pork, in the pan, or it was a
bad day for fishing," he writes.

After supper the wagon was partly unloaded, the feather bed laid upon the
planks under the wagon roof and spread with blankets. Then Samson sang
songs and told stories or played upon the violin to amuse the family. The
violin invariably woke the birds in the tree-tops, and some, probably
thrushes or warblers or white throated sparrows, began twittering. Now
and then one would express his view of the disturbance with a little
phrase of song. Often the player paused to hear these musical whispers
"up in the gallery," as he was wont to call it.

Often if the others were weary and depressed he would dance merrily
around the fire, playing a lively tune, with Sambo glad to lend a helping
foot and much noise to the program. If mosquitos and flies were