This suggests to me the fact that the climate of New England has changed tremendously since I was a boy. Most old people say something like this. When I was a boy there was snow every winter and all winter. Now there is comparatively little snow. Then it used to begin in November, and we were practically shut in on our farms, often even in our houses, for the winter. For six months the snow covered the earth. When we wanted to get out, we had to break our way out with an ox-sled. The old climate of New England has gone. When I was ten years old I began taking "truck" to the old Quincy market in Boston. It was ten miles away, but I soon got accustomed to going there alone and selling out the farm produce and vegetables. I had to get up at four o'clock in the mornings, in order to look after the horse and to harness him. He was called "Old Tom," and was a faithful, trustworthy animal. I would arrive at the market before dawn, and would back the wagon up against the market-house and wait for the light. I fed the horse, and now and then, if the weather was particularly bad, I would put him in a stable for a few hours, at a cost of fifty cents, and feed him on oats. After closing out the "truck," I would drive to Cambridgeport, where I bought the groceries and other supplies for the farm. My grandmother trusted all this to me. After this I got a luncheon, which cost me a "shilling cut," as it was called then--twelve and a half cents. Then I would drive home, and could give to grandmother a full and itemized account of everything, without having set down a word or a figure on paper. This went on for two or three years. For amusement, as I have said, I had the universal atmosphere, and I had the great old farm, and the forest and the fields. I had them all to myself. I roamed over them, and through them, at will. I used to set box-traps for rabbits and snares for partridges. I had a little gun, also, and a little dog, with which I would hunt rabbits or squirrels. The dog I have always regarded with wonder. He could see a gray squirrel at the top of a tree half a mile away. Some persons think he smelled the squirrel, but I am certain he saw it. And he was only a mongrel, at that. He would lead me to a tree, and I would shoot the squirrel. The little dog--a sort of fox terrier--was the only real friend I ever had. He was my constant companion, whenever I could get to him or he to me. In the winter I used him as a warming-pan. The old farmhouse was cold--very cold. We had no means of heating it. At night I would find the sheets of my bed as cold as an ice-floe. Then I would send my little dog down under the covering, and he would stay there until he had warmed up the bed.