He was not what would be called an educated man to-day, but he had studied the national and the state constitutions; knew all about the politics of the country; looked after the interest of the district school near his home; attended regular in all seasons and weathers the village church, four miles away, and in which also he served as a trustee. He was a firm believer in the stanch Calvinism of his fathers; taught his children the Westminster Catechism on Sunday afternoons; always voted his party ticket straight, and believed with all his heart in his minister and in his favorite political leader. He toiled hard, rising early and going to bed early also. His food was simple, beef, pork, salt fish, dried apples, beans, and farm vegetables, with milk, butter and eggs in abundance, and bread, if not the whitest, yet always sweet, made from the wheat of his own growing, ground into flour at his neighbor’s grist mill. His work did not present any great variety. In spring there was the regular round of repairing the fences, cleaning out the barnyard, ploughing and sowing; followed in due time by the long and laborious hoeing the corn and potatoes, and then by the mowing the grass with scythes, reaping the grain with sickle or cradle, and afterward the threshing on the barn floor by the well-swung flail, whose sturdy blows filled all the valley with answering echoes. In winter there was the cutting, hauling, sawing, splitting and piling in the shed the abundant supply of wood that was to keep up the next year’s fires in the great fireplace, the huge brick oven, and the kitchen and “living room” stoves. Pleasures and recreations were few; the huskings in the fall, the squirrel and rabbit hunts, the evening chats with a neighbor along with the apples and mug of cider, the game of checkers by the kitchen fire on a stormy day, the occasional larger gathering for an early supper, the spelling match, and the singing school. Books were not numerous, the weight making up for the lack of variety. There were the Bible, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” Rollins’s “Ancient History,” Watts’s “Improvement of the Mind,” Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest,” Young’s “Night Thoughts,” and a stray volume of _The Spectator_.