Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

THE OLD FARM 89
observed the aftectionate regard grandfather had for him, and
then we were able to overlook the faults of the aged feline.
Now our man Sam had been a quiet speetator of the history
of Thomas cat and concluded that his worthless life were better
ended, so one evening, after grandfather had his traps and
snares well set for the night, Sam caught old Tom and knocked
him in the head and then passed the noose of one of the traps
around his neck, and there hung the old yellow cat, stone dead.
When our grandfather found what had happened to his pet,
he thought only of the success of his trap. I see him now,
coming into the house swinging Tom by the tail and uttering
a cry of victory in his own way: "Ooghy! Ooghy!" Later,
as he sat waiting for his breakfast, he appeared in a brown
study, and after a short time he very suddenly exclaimed,
"Sam did it!"
Our grandfather used to take us with him on his outings.
One day in October, about the year 1847, on one of those fine,
frosty mornings when the sun was just peeping over Neighbor
Bruin's barn, our grandsire called to Brother Joe and me to
get on our thick shoes and stockings as he wanted us to gather
walnuts. This request, of course, was made in the sign language.
We were soon off with mother's big kettle, down by
the fence and over into the field where the walnut trees grew.
Ours was a most primitive way of taking off the damp, black
hulls. Grandfather himself made us a pounder of iron of some
weight, and in the big kettle we would pound off the hulls, or
rather loosen them so that when we placed them in the sun
they would dry and fall off. Thus we spread them in sunny
places for a time, and then it was our job to pick the walnuts
out of the hulls with our own little fingers. From morning
to morning of autumn we heard the call to business, until we
had bushels of fine, well-cured walnuts. These we stored in
grandfather's old house or in the loft of the carriage house,
and there on stormy days we cracked them on the old anvil
he had brought over the mountains from "Jersey" so long be-
fore.
How well do I remember the remnant of grandfather's
old orchard, where in days long before any of us were born the