It is more than probable that if we, with our modern notions and habits, could to-day be carried back into a similar condition of life, we would feel that our lines had fallen in anything but pleasant places. The flying years, with their changes and anxieties, like the constant dripping of water on a stone, have worn off the rough edges that wounded and worried during their progress, and only the sunny spots, burned in the plastic memory of younger days, remain. The old homes, as I remember them in those days, were thought palatial in their proportions and conveniences, and so they were as compared with the old log houses. The latter often still remained as relics of other days, but they had been converted into the base use of a cow stable, or a shelter for waggons and farm implements during the winter. Their successors were, with very few exceptions, wooden structures, clap- boarded, and painted either yellow or red. The majority, however, never received any touching up from the painter's brush, and as the years rolled on became rusty and gray from the beating of winter's storms and the heat of summer's sun. The interior rarely displayed any skill in arrangement or design. The living rooms were generally of goodly size, with low ceilings, but the sleeping rooms were invariably small, with barely room enough for a large high-posted bedstead, and a space to undress in. The exterior was void of any architectural embellishment, with a steep roof pierced by dormer windows. The kitchen, which always seemed to me like an after-thought, was a much lower part of the structure, welded on one end or the other of the main body of the house, and usually had a roof projecting some distance over one side, forming "the stoop." In very many cases, the entrance to the spacious cellar, where the roots, apples, cider, and other needs of the household were kept, was from this through a trap door, so that in summer or winter the good wife had actually to go out of doors when anything was required for the table, and that was very often. It really seemed as though the old saying of "the longest way round is the shortest way home" entered not only into the laying out of highways, but into all the domestic arrangements. Economy of time and space, convenience, or anything to facilitate or lighten labour, does not appear to have occupied the thoughts of the people. Work was the normal condition of their being, and, as we see it now, everything seems to have been so arranged as to preclude the possibility of any idle moments. At the end of the kitchen was invariably a large fire-place, with its wide, gaping mouth, an iron crane, with a row of pothooks of various lengths, from which to suspend the pots over the fire, and on the hearth a strong pair of andirons, flanked by a substantial pair of tongs and a shovel. During the winter, when the large back-log, often as much as two men could handle, was brought in and fixed in its place, and a good forestick put on the