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

136 ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
Thereafter we lost all trace of this unfortunate man who had
started in life with a good education and high hopes. It was
said that the cause of his wrecked life was a disappointment in
love, but this was an almost too commonly assigned reason
for every kind of youthful disaster in those days. It seemed
to us heartless pride in his relatives to send an unfortunate
brother far away and allow him to come to so uncared-for an
end. He simply disappeared, and no one seems to have noted
it. I have been at some loss to know where to classify these
waifs of humanity, and now they have strayed in here with our
good old neighbors, so different from them in every particular.
Isaac Bruin and his industrious wife lived on the farm adjoining
our Walnut Tree Farm on the east. "Brother Bruin,"
as father always called him, was a religious man belonging to
the same church as our parents. He was father of an oldfashioned
family of fourteen children, and was a man who
understood how to make a farm pay. I venture to say that
his pork barrel was never empty nor did they buy lard; they
killed a beef every fall and dried great quantities of it, making
the best dried beef I ever ate. There seemed an endless
amount of poultry over there — chickens, turkeys, and guineafowls.
They owned a herd of fine dairy cows and Mrs. Bruin
knew how to make the finest brand of butter. They lived in
a large brick house, with a great kitchen which in the early
times was the family living room, with one of those great fire-
places fitted for a real backlog, and with a brick oven at the
side of the immense chimney. From this oven the large
family was supplied with the best of bread, mince pies, and
stirred cake; they set a bountiful table. Their housekeeping
was the best, with everything in order. They had a large
east porch, scrubbed white and clean, where the family dined
on hot summer days.
Mr. and Mrs. Bruin were as fine and stalwart specimens
of manhood and womanhood as you would see anywhere,
and their children must have been well nourished and cared
for; and yet in the neighborhood cemetery there is a long
row of marble slabs extending half-way across its extent,
which mark the graves of those children who passed from