night-fall, the green glass quart whisky bottle, stopped with a cob, was handed to every one, man and boy, as they arrived, to take a drink. A sufficient number to constitute a sort of quorum having arrived, two men, or more commonly two boys, constituted themselves, or were by acclamation declared, captains. They paced the rick, and estimated its contractions and expansions

with the eye, until they were able to fix the spot on which the end of the dividing rail should be. The choice depended on the tossing of a chip, one side of which had been spit upon. The first choice of men was decided in the same way, and in a few minutes the rick was charged upon by the rival forces. As others arrived, as soon as the owner had given each

the bottle, he fell in according to the end he belonged to.

"The captains planted themselves on each side of the rail, sustained by their most active operations. Here, at the beginning, was the great contest, for it was lawful to cause the rail to slide or fall toward your own end, shortening it and lengthening the other. Before I was twelve years old, I had stood many times near the rail, either as captain or private; and although fifty years have rolled away, I have never seen a more anxious rivalry, nor a fiercer struggle. It was here I first learned that competition is the mother of cheating, falsehood, and broils. Corn might be thrown over unhusked, the rail might be pulled toward you by the hand dexterously applied underneath, your feet might push corn to the other side of the rail, your husked corn might be so short a distance as to bury up the base of the pile on the other side. If charged with any of those tricks, you of course denied it, and there the matter sometimes rested; and at other times the charge was reaffirmed, and then rebutted with 'you lie,' etc., and then a fight at the moment, or at the end, settled the question of veracity.

"The heap cut in two, the parties turn their backs upon one another, and then, making their hands keep time to a peculiar sort of tune, the chorus of voices in a still night might be heard a mile. The oft replenished whisky bottle meanwhile circulated freely, and at the close the victorious captain, mounted on the shoulders of some of the stoutest men, with the bottle in one hand and his hat in the other, was carried in triumph around the vanquished party, amidst the shouts of victory which rent the air.

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Then came the supper in which the women had

been busily employed, and which always included a pot-pie. Either before or after eating the fighting took place; and by midnight the sober were found assisting the drunken home. Such was one of my autumnal schools from the age of nine to fifteen years."

THE APPLE - CUTTING AND THE "FROLIC."

When, in the course of years, orchards yielded their annual fruitage, cider flowed from the creaking press, and was stored in the cellar for liberal potation by the winter hearth.

The old-time apple-cutting was an occasion of unbounded mirth. The middle-aged and the young of a whole neighborhood assembled at some spacious farmhouse to peel and pare great heaps of apples for drying, or make into "butter" by stewing in boiled cider.

The love-fortunes of men and maids were determined by the counting of apple-seeds; and whoever removed the entire skin of a pippin in one long ribbon, whirled the lucky streamer thrice around his head and let it fall behind him on the floor, and in the form it took a quick fancy read the monogram of his or her intended mate.

After the apples were cut, and the cider boiled, the floor was cleared for a "frolic," technically so called, and merry were the dancers and loud the songs with which our fathers and mothers regaled the flying hours. The fiddler was a man of importance, and when, after midnight, he called the "Virginia Reel," such shouting, such laughter, such clatter of hilarious feet upon the sanded puncheon floor, startled the screech-owl out of doors, and waked the baby from its sweet slumber in the sugar trough.. I will not deny that Tom Wilkins, who came to the frolic dressed in a

green hunting-shirt and deer-skin trousers, drank something stronger than hard cider, and was bolder than he should have been in his gallant attentions to Susan. But let by-gones be by-gones. The apple-cutting was fifty years ago, and Tom and Susan have danced the dance of life, and their tomb-stones are decorous enough.

THE LUXURIES OF NATURE.

We often speak of the hardships of pioneer life, and do not overrate them; but life has compensations, and the woods, with all its drawbacks, has its advantages too. Think of the lavish natural luxuries that the primeval forest and the new fields afforded. Money was scarce, prices were higher, and artificial luxuries were unobtainable; but the teeming soil, the woods, the stream, the very air, were exuberant with supplies to satisfy man's wants. The rich mold of the "truckpatch" needed no fertilizing; the corn, beans, pumpkins, grew like magical plants. To go fishing was to catch all the fish you wanted. An hour in the woods loaded the hunter with game. Wild game was a pest, so plenty it was-armies of squirrels, innumerable pigeons.

Nuts showered from the hickory and walnut trees, and the boys gathered them by the bushel-by the wagon load-to crack by the cabin hearth of winter nights. A humming music in the air, like Ariel's choir, told the wood-wanderer of swarming bees, and the hollow trunk of a great tree yielded honey by the tubful and barrel. Bee-trees were sought and robbed, in the swarming season, much in the manner that Irving has described. Men would climb to the hollow in which the sweet hoard was concealed, and