"Well, there's plenty of work in the woods. It's a rough life, but it ain't so bad when you're used to it. I worked in the woods before I was married. I could go out to the woods now, and earn two dollars a day and my keep; but my wife wouldn't let me. And it's a pretty rough life, only I come to like it. But I've got my farm now, and my wife and children; and her old folks lives with us, and I've got to stay to home, and take care of things. Say, where are you going to-night?" "I don't know. I'll try to find some place to stay where I can help with the work to pay for my keep; and then to-morrow I'll go to the woods, and try to get a job." "I tell you, stranger, you stay at my house to-night, and in the morning you can go to English Centre. I guess you'll get a job on one of the camps." My thanks could have expressed but little of the gratitude I felt. I shared his light-hearted mood at once, and was a very interested and attentive listener to the narrative of his early life; his disagreements with his father, and how he had inherited the farm from him burdened with debt, but had almost paid the mortgages, and had his eye now upon a neighbor's farm with a view to purchasing that. He was singing again as we drove up the lane toward his home, and was plainly expectant. The cause was clear when two children, a girl and boy of about six and four, came running toward the wagon, with excited cries of welcome. They drew up sharply at sight of a stranger, and their father loudly greeted them with a medley of affectionate diminutives in English and German, until they lost their fear, and began to talk rapidly with him in the quaintest German, which sounded as though it might be one with the strange dialects which you see in _Fliegende Blätter_. I helped to unhitch the horses, and then asked whether there was more that I could do. There were apples to be picked up from under the trees in the orchard, and I worked at this task until dark, when there came the call to supper. After that meal the children were put to bed, and the rest of us gathered in the kitchen, where a large open fire burned, and an oil-lamp lent its light. An "apple-butter making" was to be the feature of the next day's work, and we spent the evening in getting ready for it. We sat in a semicircle in front of the fire, first the farmer's wife, and then the patriarchal grandfather, who was almost deaf, and was known to all the household by the not euphonious name of "Gross-pap," and next to him the grandmother, and last the guest. The farmer himself sat at a table near us, briskly working an apple-peeler, while the rest of us removed the cores, and cut the apples into small sections. It was a very comfortable place which I seemed to have found in the household. I was taken in with natural hospitality, and the family life moved on unhampered by my presence, while I, a welcome guest, could sit and watch it at my ease.