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

OUR MOTHER, SOPHRONIA KEELER 43
when company was expected. It is true that the demands of
society, large houses and the muItipHcity of cares they entail,
burden many women of to-day so that life appears far too complex;
but when we think that those little homes of our mothers
were small factories in addition to the usual household duties,
their lives do not seem so simple as the first fleeting glance
might indicate.
Self-reliance was a part of their education, and it has been
told of our mother that her father never bought her a pair of
shoes after she was seven years old. That was a sad year,
1817, when there was frost in every month, and the poor new
Englanders suffered for food. Our grandparents were no
exception, and their chddren often went to bed hungry. I
wish now that mother had given us more particulars of those
days, but she was one who made it a point to say but little
upon subjects which were pamful. I know that all crops and
vegetation were destroyed, and that the family subsisted mainly
upon milk from a cow that wandered farther up in the
mountains where there was stdl grazing, and that their only
fruit was huckleberries, which they ate with their milk. Once
Grandfather Keeler went away from home to work and got a
half-bushel of corn and carried it on his shoulder many miles
to mill, perhaps thirty, and when it was ground he came home
with some real food for the family.
Our mother became an expert spinner, and her swiftness
gained much for her. Once because of her record as a spinner
she was called to Vermont to spin. Even her childhood was
full of labor, we see, and we know that what she learned to do
she did well and thoroughly. Despite her busy childhood and
girlhood the little mother found some time for recreation. The
playground of the Keeler children was in the shadow of the
beautiful Adirondacks on the shores of Lake Champlain and
amongst the ruins of Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point.
They saw the place that Lord Howe fell and understood the
picture
From the giant, tangled dark woods.
In the Trout Brook at the ambush.
Wet with mists of roaring cascades,
Floateth up his strong, white spirit.