Entering the New Home.
It was late in
the fall, and there was now on the ground when we entered our new
home. I do not know that we were especially proud of our new house,
but we were not in the least ashamed of it, and with our ample
fire-place, and the best of wood, and in unlimited abundance, we made
ourselves very comfortable during the cold winter days and nights that
followed.
You can readily
imagine that, in our great haste to get into the new house, many
things remained to be done after we had moved in.
Our way of
getting up stairs was by means of a ladder in one corner of the house.
The upper floor was loosely laid down, and in some parts, the
puncheons or planks rested, at one end, two or three inches on the
joists, and the other end lapped over on the next layer, so that a
little care had to be exercised lest one end might slip off from the
joist and let us through.
A Little Incident.
One night we had
company, but for some unaccountable reason I retired early. My brother
Isaac and I always slept together, and he being the older, claimed
right always to sleep on the front side of the bed. As the head of the
bed in this case stood next to the wall and both sides were alike
accessible, it was difficult to determine which was the front. But
after a while my brother came up, and when he got ready to jump into
bed, he thought the side in which I had planted myself for the night
was the front, and he wished me to lie over and give him the
right-of-way to that side. The coldness of the night, mingled with a
considerable amount of native depravity, made me hesitate somewhat, in
meeting the requirement with that alacrity that the case seemed to
demand, and so my brother, bracing himself on the loose planks, made a
gentle effort to remove me to the other side, when lo! The planks
slipped off, and down went boy and boards together into the midst of
the startled company below. This sudden turn of events so shocked and
alarmed him that he cried out most lustily, which, of course, greatly
frightened mother and brought her at once to the rescue to see if her
boy had been seriously injured.
But her suspense
was of short duration, for the nimble use he made of his limbs, in the
endeavor to get out of sight as quickly as possible, revealed the fact
that no bones were broken. It was probably not more than two seconds
before he had reached the nearest bed on the lower floor and buried
himself under its ample covering, not stopping for an instant to
determine which was the front or which was the rear.
He afterwards
declared to me that the fall did not hurt him in the least, but he
made the vigorous outcry in order to excite sympathy and divert the
attention of the company from the very scant wardrobe in which he had
so suddenly made his appearance.
Among the
innumerable things that taxed the energies of us all was that of
securing our winter’s hay for the stock. As at that season of the year
many of the family were sick, the haying fell mostly upon the
shoulders of my brother Charles, with what little help I could render.
The Bee Tree.
One day, as we
were on our way to the slough, forty rods, perhaps, west of the
boulevard at Midway Park, we passed through the woods, and hearing a
buzzing sound above our heads, I looked up and saw bees going in and
out of a hollow tree at a most lively rate. It was a bee tree, and it
was mine by right of discovery. I was one of the proudest, happiest
boys in Linn county. These bee trees were common at that time, and men
were very successful in finding them. I only found one more, however,
several years afterwards, and that was stolen from me before we were
ready to cut it down, I having been simple enough to reveal the secret
of its location to a dishonest boy of my acquaintance.
The mode of
finding these swarms of bees was to “line them.” The habit of the bee
is to fill itself with honey, and then circle around, rising higher
and higher, ad then darting off in a straight line to the tree where
the swarm had fixed its home. Bees were often seen upon the flowers,
and by little pools of water, and they were watched till they started
on their homeward flight. Getting the line in this way from different
points of the compass, the location of the tree was easily fixed. In
due course of time my bee tree was cut down, the bees were driven away
by smoke, and the honey was taken. The net product was four or five
pailfuls of beautiful honey.
I was extremely
fond of honey, and I ate enough at that one time to last me for at
least twenty years. I had just been the happiest boy in Linn county,
but that night I thought I was the sickest boy in the Territory of
Iowa. For years after the sight or smell of honey would make me
shudder with disgust. However, in the course of a quarter of century
the old taste for it partially returned; but never will it taste so
delicious to me again as it did the nigh I stood beside those full
pails and helped myself, fifty-six years ago.
I have learned
since that experience with the honey, that a moderate amount of the
sweet in any sense of the word, is far better than an overdose of the
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