As there may be a desire in long after years to have a knowledge of how the "well-to-do" farmers lived in the early part of the present century in New Jersey, I will describe the condition of the people at my father's. New Jersey was a slave State when I was born. In 1820 slavery was abolished; but there were two hundred and thirty-six slaves for life in 1850 in the State, because it did not emancipate a slave then in being. It only set free the _unborn babes_. You see the difference between _abolition_ and _emancipation_? The superabundance of the necessaries of life at that period can scarcely be realized now, and every one fared sumptuously, and nearly all alike. Under the house there were four cellars. As winter approached, perhaps forty cords of oak and hickory wood, four feet in length, were hauled to the wood pile. Some twenty or more fat hogs were killed, the hams and shoulders sugar-cured and smoked in a large stone smokehouse. The sides, etc., were salted down in great cedar tanks. The beeves were killed, the rounds dried, not smoked, and the rest "corned." Minced meat and sausage, in linked chains by the hundreds of pounds, cider boiled down in great copper kettles, and apple butter and pear sauce made without stint. Shad from the fishery were bought for salting down for six dollars per hundred. Oysters by the wagon load were in winter put in the cellar and kept fat by sprinkling them with brine and corn meal. In bins the choice apples were stored, each variety by itself, for daily use, while large quantities were buried in the earthen pits for spring. On the swinging shelves was the product of the dairy, cheese and butter. Four hogsheads were kept full of cider vinegar; and "apple jack" (apple brandy) in barrels in a row, according to age; great old-fashioned demijohns were kept full of cherries, wild and cultivated, covered with brandy. Apples, peaches, pears, huckleberries, currants, plums, etc., were dried on scaffolds in the sun for pies and other purposes: and the children forgot not their ample supply of chestnuts, shellbarks, hazelnuts, etc. Turkeys, geese, and barnyard fowls were raised largely, but they were considered produce for sale. There was no stint to these superabundant supplies, and they were yearly consumed. Rabbits, pheasants, partridges, and woodcock were abundant, and often were secured by trapping; and the ponds and streams were filled with fish. I might perhaps convey to you a better idea of the abundance of fruit and its cheapness by stating that I have seen wagons come to the farm for peaches, and they were told to go into the orchard and get as many as they wanted, and on coming out an estimate would be made of the number of bushels gathered, and they were charged ten cents per bushel. Apples, the finest of varieties, were unsalable, and were hauled to the great public cider mill, ground up for cider, and that distilled into brandy on shares--that is, the mills allowed