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

THE OLD FARM 71
deepest earnestness: "When I get to be a big man I will be
rich; I will have fine houses and carriages and horses; I will
get a nice wife — " then, as if in deep thought, he would add
musingly, "Where will I get mine children?" After a moment's
pause a bright flash would light his ruddy face and he
would exclaim: "I know; I will go to meeting and grab one!"
He told mother what he would do for her, for his love for his
mother was ever deep and lasting. With the first money he
ever earned he bought her a nice dress. It is not often the
dreams of childhood are so nearly fulfilled as were those of our
younger brother.
The average home of those days had but few luxuries;
cooking stoves were just being introduced. Our grandfather
was one of the first to buy one. The small stoves cost some
thirty or forty dollars. They would be considered of a strange
pattern now, opening with one big door in front on hinges like
a barn door and with a latch like our old-fashioned doors. The
lids had bails like buckets; the casting was heavy and rough,
but it did fairly well, and would bake two pies or three loaves
of bread in the oven at a time. The variety of food in those
days was meager; pork and beans was one of the staples, dried
fruit a luxury. If the wheat crop failed the family lived on corn
bread; if the cows ceased to give milk we did without. Orleans
molasses was thought to be a treat; all the sugar we had was
brown. Once mother bought loaf sugar, and this was kept in
a clean pillow case in the bureau drawer for sickness. I like
to think that the years added some comforts. It was very
hard on mother to bend over the hot open fires until her face
was flushed and veins distended, and I am glad our grandfather
was one of the first to get a cook stove.
The record of the time our grandparents lived on the farm
as well as we is not clearly remembered by me; especially is the
memory of grandmother veiled deeply by the mist of years,
as I was but a child of six when she died. I recall the fact that
I delighted to go down to see the old people, whose home was
but a few rods away, just across the road from our new frame
house which father built after our first cabin home. I can re-