At six o’clock the supper-table was set. The cows had been fed and milked; the boys had brought in the wood, and as they had no wood-boxes, they dumped the heavy three-foot sticks on the floor by the fire, or stood it up on end against the wall at one side, or piled it between the legs of the kitchen table; and other odd jobs were done, and the family gathered about the table. Bread and milk was quite apt to be the chief supper dish. After the blessing was asked and the elders had seated themselves, the children would fill their pewter porringers or wooden bowls and pull their chairs up about the fireplace. Instead, they would sometimes crouch on the stone hearth, while the fire glowed and crackled and set the lights and shadows playing about the little figures. Their chatter back and forth and the company of the fire made their circle like a little world in itself, and the grown folks and their talk seemed far, far away. [Illustration: A SPRING MORNING] When supper was ended and the dishes done, the women took up their sewing and knitting. Almost everything worn was of home manufacture, and the task of making and mending was a never-ending one. Even the little girls of four or five years were not idle, but were taking their first lessons with the knitting-needles. The men had less real work to do,--perhaps were occupied with mending a broken harness or tool, making a birch broom, whittling out a few clothes-pins, or constructing a box-trap in which to catch mice. Sometimes certain of the family played games. Evening, too, was a time for reading. Just before the children went to bed, the family laid aside all tasks and games, and read a chapter from the Bible and had prayers. By nine o’clock all had retired except the father,--the head of the family,--who wound the clock, pulled off his boots in a boot-jack of his own making, and yawned as he shovelled the ashes over some of the larger hard-wood coals, lest the fire should be lost during the night. Then he, too, disappeared, and the fire snapped more feebly, with now and then a fresh but short-lived effort to blaze, and so faded into a dull glow and left the gloomy shadows of the room in almost full sway. It is difficult to compare the old life with the new and say that in any particular way one was better than the other, and decide under which conditions character would grow most manly or most womanly. Human nature is the same now as fifty or seventy-five years ago; but that nature grows in a different soil, and surrounded by a different atmosphere. Our present standards are unlike the old, the conditions surrounding us have changed, and the way in which our feelings, our desires, and aspirations find expression is changed as well. [Illustration: A WILLOW-LINED RIVER]