The new home presented a phase of life quite unfamiliar to me. From never having had any playmates, I now found myself one of a very lively body of six—three boys and three girls nearer of an age than would have been probable in the same family. My father had taken charge of the young son of a friend—Lovett Stimpson—a fine, robust, intelligent lad of about my age, who lived with us. It would be difficult to describe what this new life, for the time it continued, became to me, or indeed I to it. As I look back upon it I realize that we were a group of good children with honorable instincts, obedient and kindly disposed. In later years none of us could recall a serious difference of any kind, no cruelty and no broken faith. It took just six, and no more, to keep a secret. But this portrayal of characteristics gives no clue to, indeed casts no shadow, of what we were capable of accomplishing in a day. The territorial domain comprised something over three hundred acres. We knew it all. From “Peakèd Hill,” to “Jim Brown’s”—across the “Flowed Swamp,” three miles, we knew every rod of it. Old “Rocky Hills,” so high, so steep, so thickly wooded that a horse would never attempt them, were no strangers. We knew where the best chestnuts were. We explored the “Devil’s Den,” in spite of the tradition that it was an abode for the tempters of Eve. The “French River,” that later carried all the factories of North Oxford, spread itself out in lazy rest, after its rugged leaps, as it meandered through the broad, beautiful meadows and interval land, the pride of the farm. A long hewn log or pole stretched across it in its narrowest, deepest place. I would not dare to say how long, but it could not have been more than fourteen inches wide, and swayed and teetered from the moment the foot touched till it left it. The waters glided still and black beneath. It was there as a convenience for the working men in crossing from one field to another; but if ever a week day passed that we did not cross it several times, we knew one duty had been neglected. The only sawmill in that section of the town was a part of my father’s possessions. The great up-and-down saw cut its angry way through the primeval forest giants from morning till night, and not unfrequently from night till morning. The long saw-carriage ran far out over the raceway at the rear end. How were we to withstand the temptation of riding out over the rushing mill stream twenty feet below, and then coming quickly in as the sawn log was drawn back for another cut? Hurt? Never one of us. Killed? We knew not such a thing could be.