There was always some new job presenting itself for me to do. Quite unexpectedly, on the day and night of the 24th of December, twenty-five hundred merino sheep began to lamb. It was dry, cold, with a heavy snow. The mothers, showing the quality of inbreeding, did not want their lambs, would not nurse them unless we tied them together. The Cotswold, of far less value, is a perfect mother, but the high-priced Spanish merino would, on a drive, walk behind a bush, lamb, and go on without it. There is everything non-aristocratic in being a perfect mother. Another one of my occupations—and, indeed, one in which all of the help about the house joined—was keeping track of Sisson’s glass eye. He had a beautiful fifty-dollar eye which he wore to market and down to San Francisco, but this one we rarely saw. His cheap ten-dollar one was constantly slanting in the wrong direction, and then Mrs. Sisson would say, “Sisson, northwest.” Back it would go at its proper angle, and all would be well again. But the great excitement was when it was lost entirely. Everything stopped until it was found, which was generally in the wooden gutter that led away from the washbasin under the pump. Coming down in the morning, with it in his mouth, he would place it temporarily on the shelf while washing, and it would roll down the gutter, where it remained—gazing fixedly with mute and silent reproach at the diligent searcher. Sisson, being small and of a combative temperament, was the butt of many a joke. Old Andy Gregg passed one day just after a new and beautiful sign had been put up, announcing that the place was: SISSONS. “Hello, Andy! Bet you never seen a name with so many s’s in it,” said the hotelkeeper. “Oh yes, I have!” said Andy. “‘Ass!’” Any intellectual job—of which there were few—was given to me. I was called “Boston,” and was supposed to have a great amount of book learning, so it was my extreme pleasure to be the clerk of the polls at a Presidential election in Strawberry Valley. There were seven voters, and six voted early. They were Republicans. After casting their ballots, they stationed themselves at different positions, one hundred feet from the polls, and, cocking their Winchesters, sat there all day. The one Democrat rotated about that voting place until the sun had fairly set, but it was no use; he was not allowed to vote. I was forced to turn in a unanimous majority for Rutherford B. Hayes. One Sunday there was nothing to do. I was loafing around the gateway in my working clothes when the stage arrived. I noticed that the driver looked cross. The passenger—“a dam’ Britisher”—who sat on the seat beside him, had evidently “got his goat,” for, contrary to his usual habit, he unstrapped the trunk from the back and dropped it into the dust of the road. The Englishman, looking hopelessly around, spied me, and said in the manner he obviously kept for service: “My good fellow, give me a hand with this luggage?”