[Illustration:  I Rehearsed My Orations with Startling Effect.]

The worthy deacon and my deeply religious father alternately led the family devotions, and peace and comfort prevailed.  The mowing machine, horse-hoe, corn-planter and power-rake dispensed with the drudgery of the scythe and back-breaking hand tools.  A protective tariff had set the mill wheels rolling in the neighboring cities, thus furnishing excellent markets for all the products of the farm.  The sky-scraping shoe manufactories, where men, like automatons, delved night and day for a few weeks and then leaving them to semi-starvation for the rest of the year, had not yet arrived.

One of my brothers had, like most of the farmers of that day, his little shop where in winter he coined a few hundred dollars making boots and shoes, and where I earned many precious pennies, blackballing the edges and occasionally pegging by hand, all of which is now done by machinery.

We could now afford occasional holidays, when we all gaily sailed down the river, dug clams, caught lobsters in nets, regaled ourselves with toothsome chowders, broils and stews in the open air, and had many rollicking good times swimming in the breakers, frolicking, old and young, like children.  We pitched our tents on old Bar Island, slept on the fragrant hay at night, played ball, and renewed our youth inhaling deep draughts of the salty wind which bloweth in from the sea.

When sailing home one day with a wet sheet, a flowing main, and a breeze following far abaft, we espied a boat submerged to the gunwhale floating out to sea.  Throwing our yacht up into the wind, we took the craft in tow to the landing, and were surprised and delighted beyond measure to find it nearly half full of fine large lobsters, held there by a wire netting.  For weeks we and all the neighbors held high carnival boiling and eating the luscious crustaceans.

We had much merriment one day on a fishing excursion at the expense of a parsimonious member of our crew.  At first he alone pulled in the much prized tomcods and flounders.  “Well,” said he, “I think we better go in, each one for himself.”  “All right,” was the reply, but soon stingy ceased to catch any, while the rest of us pulled in the fish as fast as we could throw the hooks.  Mr. Greedy looked very solemn, and at last, unable to repress his selfishness longer, shouted:  “I think we better share all alike!” “Too late,” was the chorus, and while he carried home but a beggarly string, the rest rejoiced in our great abundance.

These seem like little incidents, light as airy nothings, but they come back to memory in the twilight of life when other and greater events are all forgotten.

When the crops were all harvested, and the winds and snows of winter shut me out from my woodland, river, and seashore haunts, I grew weary of the monotony of the indoor country life, and once more went to the city of Boston in the endless quest of the unattainable.