part in these duties, and used to wish I could go back to my primitive
cradle. But time pushed me on whether I would or not, until I scaled the
mountain top of life's activities; and now, when quietly descending into
the valley, my gaze is turned affectionately towards those early days. I
do not think they were always bright and joyous, and I am sure I often
chafed under the burdens imposed upon me; but how inviting they seem
when viewed through the golden haze of retrospection.

My next recollection is the raising of a frame barn behind the house,
and of a niece of my father's holding me in her arms to see the men
pushing up the heavy "bents" with long poles. The noise of the men
shouting and driving in the wooden pins with great wooden beetles, away
up in the beams and stringers, alarmed me a great deal, but it all went
up, and then one of the men mounted the plate (the timber on which the
foot of the rafter rests) with a bottle in his hand, and swinging it
round his head three times, threw it off in the field. If the bottle was
unbroken it was an omen of good luck. The bottle, I remember, was picked
up whole, and shouts of congratulation followed. Hence, I suppose, the
prosperity that attended my father.

The only other recollection I have of this place was of my father, who
was a very ingenious man, and could turn his hand to almost everything,
making a cradle for my sister, for this addition to our number had
occurred. I have no remembrance of any such fanciful crib being made for
my slumbers. Perhaps the sap-trough did duty for me in the house as well
as in the bush. The next thing was our removal, which took place in the
winter, and all that I can recall of it is that my uncle took my mother,
sister, and myself away in a sleigh, and we never returned to the little
log house. My father had sold his farm, bought half of his old home, and
come to live with his parents. They were Quakers. My grandfather was a