My father was at times a Justice of the Peace and always had a commission as notary public. This enabled him to take the acknowledgment of deeds, which he knew how to draw, and administer oaths necessary to pension papers which he filled out for old soldiers usually without charge, or to take affidavits required on any other instruments. In my youth he was also always engaged in the transaction of all kinds of town business, being constantly elected for that purpose. He was painstaking, precise and very accurate, and had such wide experience that the lawyers of the region knew they could rely on him to serve papers in difficult cases and make returns that would be upheld by the courts. This work gave him such a broad knowledge of the practical side of the law that people of the neighborhood were constantly seeking his advice, to which I always listened with great interest. He always counseled them to resist injustice and avoid unfair dealing, but to keep their agreements, meet their obligations and observe strict obedience to the law. By reason of what I saw and heard in my early life, I came to have a good working knowledge of the practical side of government. I understood that it consisted of restraints which the people had imposed upon themselves in order to promote the common welfare. As I went about with my father when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid some one had to work to earn the money to pay them. I saw that a public debt was a burden on all the people in a community, and while it was necessary to meet the needs of a disaster it cost much in interest and ought to be retired as soon as possible. After the winter work of laying in a supply of wood had been done, the farm year began about the first of April with the opening of the maple-sugar season. This was the most interesting of all the farm operations to me. With the coming of the first warm days we broke a road through the deep snow into the sugar lot, tapped the trees, set the buckets, and brought the sap to the sugar house, where in a heater and pans it was boiled down into syrup to be taken to the house for sugaring off. We made eight hundred to two thousand pounds, according to the season. After that the fences had to be repaired where they had been broken down by the snow, the cattle turned out to pasture, and the spring planting done. Then came sheep-shearing time, which was followed by getting in the hay, harvesting and threshing of the grain, cutting and husking the corn, digging the potatoes and picking the apples. Just before Thanksgiving the poultry had to be dressed for market, and a little later the fattened hogs were butchered and the meat salted down. Early in the winter a beef creature was slaughtered.