“The squire and I were friends, all through the winter and spring. He and his two sons, with the blacksmith’s boys, and three men from the furnace ten miles down the stream, assisted me to build my house; and I borrowed a horse from the smith and a wagon in town, to bring my lime for the plastering; so, when my new house was finished, we turned the old one, that I told you of as we came along, into a right good stable. I had laid up a full supply of provisions in the old house, the fall before,—bought me a plough and some tools,—felled a good deal of valuable pine timber, and put the four acres of clearing into winter grain. With the first spring-floods, I floated the pines, by the help of the squire’s oxen, and carried enough down to the saw-mill, (it’s only twelve miles,) to bring me a good round sum; and then I had money enough to pay my first instalment, buy me another cow and a pair of oxen, and pay my way till harvest, without draining all the savings I brought out with me. In the winter, I had also got three acres girdled, and the meadow half cleared; for it wanted but little attention; so, as my potatoes turned out uncommon well, and every thing prospered—I bought me a horse and wagon in the fall, and saved just enough to pay the second instalment;—trusting to Providence _and the stores_ for the little we should want to buy next season. “But this is not what I was talking of—I had like to have forgot the squire!—We got along very well till June or July—when we were mowing the meadow.—Yes! it was in July.—And the squire was a churchman and a democrat, but I was a federalist and a congregationalist—I did not much mind his jokes about the pilgrim fathers, though he said the Piquots were better men than those that planted the state; and laughed at them for hanging the Quakers in Boston. For the squire was a well read man before he came to the west—and he hated Connecticut, because he came from Lancaster county, and his father was killed in a quarrel with the settlers in Wyoming, long after the troubles were over. But when he said that Jefferson was a better man than General Washington, I could not stand it, and we quarrelled. I said what no Christian should say, and what I wont repeat;—so the squire and I have never spoken since, except when poor Mary was taken down! and then I had to speak; for there was no other woman within ten miles, and no doctor but a quack, within twenty-five. But Mrs. Tomkins is a nurse and a doctor both—God bless her!