felt the rising tide of spring in my blood, and a bit of free activity
like this under the blue sky suited my humour. A boy likes almost any
work that affords him an escape from routine and humdrum and has an
element of play in it. Turning the grindstone or the fanning mill or
carrying together sheaves or picking up potatoes or carrying in wood
were duties that were a drag upon my spirits.

The spring ploughing and the sowing of the grain and harrowing fell
mainly to Father and my older brothers. The spring work was considered
done when the oats were sowed and the corn and potatoes planted: the
first in early May, the latter in late May. The. buckwheat was not sown
until late June. One farmer would ask another, "How many oats are you
going to sow, or have you sown?" not how many acres. "Oh, fifteen or
twenty bushels," would be the answer.

The working of the roads came in June after the crops were in. All
hands, summoned by the "path master," would meet at a given date, at the
end of the district down by the old stone school house--men and boys
with oxen, horses, scrapers, hoes, crowbars--and begin repairing the
highway. It was not strenuous work, but a kind of holiday that we all
enjoyed more or less. The road got fixed after a fashion, here and
there--a bridge mended, a ditch cleaned out, the loose stones removed, a
hole filled up, or a short section "turnpiked"--but the days were eight-
hour days and they did not sit heavy upon us. The state does it much
better now with road machinery and a few men. Once or twice a year
Father used to send me with a hoe to throw the loose stones out of the
road.

A pleasanter duty during those years was shooting chipmunks around the
corn. These little rodents were so plentiful in my youth that they used