his farm labors. An idea of the extent of the work may be gathered from the statement, that the boys tilled some five or six acres of corn and potatoes, and about twenty tons of hay were harvested. The stock consisted of three good cows and a pair of oxen, besides hogs.

The dairy was cared for by the diligent mother, who achieved laborious triumphs in the making of butter and cheese, which fully sufficed for the family use. Although her house labors were more than equal to her slender strength and health, and her years bordering on fifty, yet she would not permit her numerous coterie of garden flowers to suffer, nor would she incur the expense of the assistance of a gardener, nor divert the boys from the necessary and crowded avocations of the field. Her flowers she fostered herself, in every hour she could snatch from household pursuits, toiling in the heat of the sun, and obliged by her nearsightedness to stoop to close proximity. Yet her ideal darlings sprang up, bloomed and faded, neither choked by weeds nor faint through want of irrigation.

As has been already stated, the family employed occasional help in the farming. Such men as worked for them no doubt have always their counterpart in society. But a few of these characters, who have long passed from life's stage, must be sketched here, because they were painted on the easel of boyish fancy, and their idiosyncrasies furnished sportive themes for Arthur's epics, while they enjoyed the honor of being enrolled in his "Universal Band." One of them, familiarly called "John," was an inveterate follower of Bacchus, in his cheaper and

grosser cups. His only merit was good-nature. We have not been able to obliterate from memory his always placid but bloated countenance. His ex

cesses had fearfully recoiled upon him. With other boon companions, he lived with a neighbor in the working season. This neighbor himself adhered firmly to principles of total abstinence - from water! He boasted that he had not been thirsty enough for twenty years to drink it. And nature had conformed to his tastes, by giving him a jug figure, surmounted with a bald head like a stopper. Certain friends of his, congenial spirits, of which charmed circle John formed a link, lived with him in the summer season, doing just days' works enough to pay for a little meat and a great deal of drink; and, when they got “out of spirits," taking up their winter-quarters in the poorhouse. Such specimens of depravity tended to give the boys a horror of those habits which had wrought their degradation; and the mother did not decline to employ them occasionally, in special exigencies, as their conversation and deportment were not objectionable when their friend Alcohol had deserted them in their need, and they were trying to obtain the golden lure to draw him back. Her pity for them exceeded her censure, as it did in the case of all the degraded and unfortunate. This they well knew, and were sometimes emboldened to enter the garden, which bordered on their own demesne, when she was engaged with her flowers, under pretext of admiring her favorites, but really with an eye to the fruits which abounded there. We well remember one occasion, when John had entered the garden and climbed into

a choice cherry-tree. There we spied him among the green leaves, his red and bacchic countenance like a huge cherry engaged in devouring the little cherries, as the rod of Aaron swallowed those of the magicians. We boys contrived to hint to him that for certain reasons these familiarities with the fruit were not entirely agreeable to us, and John was magnanimous enough to leave the banquet, alleging his preference for the indigenous fruit of the same species whose distilled virtues, he boasted, garnished the generous cellar of his host.

When we employed John and his compeers, some oversight was necessary to keep them to their tasks. They delighted to beguile their toil with narrative of fact and fiction which they represented as having once occurred in the vicinity; and they sought often to pause and lean upon their hoe, or other implement, the better to point out the locus in quo, or lend to their descriptions the animation of gesture. But Arthur was not to be circumvented in this way. Like an efficient speaker or moderator, he continually brought them back to the matter immediately under discussion, namely, the row they were hoeing, or whatever work was in hand.

One of our day-laborers brought with him a large mastiff, of whose pugnacious exploits he bragged till Arthur grew weary of the theme, and asserted that he could vanquish the dog himself. The man, with wounded vanity, declared he would like to set the dog on and try it. Arthur would not recede from what he had said, and the result was the dog was set on, and rushed, with bristled hair and tail erect and bare fangs,

to the encounter. For about five minutes Arthur plied his boots with rapidity and vigor against the dog's chest and chaps, occasionally bringing the canine jaws together with the tongue unpleasantly sandwiched between them, till the dog ingloriously lowered his caudal flag, and, despite the invective of his master, turned back from the proceeding with a bugle-note far different from the trumpet-bark which sounded the charge.

Interspersed with farm toil was the relief of rainy days and our rare public holidays. One of the latter was the old Election-day, on the last Wednesday of May; at which date it was the rule among farmers, to have the planting completed. This was a sad day for the birds, whose exulting spring melodies were wont to be cruelly interrupted, and their nestlings bereaved by the sports of the hunter. The law now has not only transferred the election day to another season, but shields with its broad ægis the little birds' nests, protecting their domestic joys from the ruthless sportsman. Arthur and Richard, we believe, only once assumed a musket, in the Election-day hunting; and we do not know that Arthur, on any other occasion, discharged fire-arms till the battle of Fredericksburg. Their father kept a brace of pistols in the house; but he always cautioned the children against them: and his warning had the more effect from the powder explosion by which, as we have narrated, Arthur and Richard were injured in Cambridge, and from an incident which occurred on one occasion, when he exhibited the pistols and the manner of firing them to gratify the curiosity of the family at the fireside. We

"Now,

have a lively recollection of that occasion. children,” said he, "I know perfectly well that these pistols are not loaded; yet, in showing you the operation of the lock, I shall not point the pistol at the head of some one, as a boy might do, for bravado. For instance, I shall not point it at your sister Margaret." With this remark, he directed the weapon to the wall, near the floor, and drew the trigger. Great was our consternation when the pistol exploded, and discharged a bullet through the wall into the cellar. This unlooked-for result was explained afterward, when it was ascertained that some one had been practising with the pistols, and inadvertently left them loaded.

On the Election-day referred to, Arthur and Richard sallied forth to the hunt, musket on shoulder. The first bobolink they levelled at was considerably agitated, broke off his jubilant strain, and took his flight, the boys claiming that they had drawn blood. Several other birds, after the discharge of their pieces, paid to their sportsmanship the compliment of retiring to a distance. But, after a while, the bobolinks seemed to get an inkling of the true nature of the case, and to shake their sides and wings, convulsed with songs of derisive merriment. After several hours, the boys returned home, without a single feather as a trophy; and they did not try the gunner's sport again. They were more successful in angling, on the banks of Nashua River, or floating in boats upon the mirror-depths of Martin's Pond.

After haying was finished, the farmers usually indulged themselves in a day's pastime, spent in a fishing