The frontier farmer boy had no lack of occupation. He split the kindling and the wood for the fire-place and gathered the chips used for lighting the cabin when tallow dips were scarce. He fed and drove the cows, but let his sister do the milking. He took part in the work of washing and shearing the sheep. He helped in churning and soap-making, and ran the melted tallow into the tin candle-molds. He looked forward to butchering day as to a celebration. In the fall he chopped the sausage meat and the various ingredients of mince pies. On stormy days and winter evenings he might help his mother clean and card the wool, wind the yarn, and hetchel flax. Later she might call upon him for help in dyeing the homespun and bleaching the linen. The boy was useful to his father when he searched the woods for good trees from which special articles were to be made, such as ax-helves and ox-yokes. From hickory saplings he could make splint brooms and cut out the splints used in making chair bottoms and baskets. He guarded the corn fields from squirrels and crows and set traps for wolves. He went on horse-back to the grist mill, which was generally some miles away, and waited there for his turn to have his sack of corn ground into meal. Along with these duties were some pleasures, such as going nutting and berrying and hunting for grapes. Bee-hunting gave its rich reward in the hollow trunk full of honey. "Sugaring off" twice in the spring was a special time of delight, though it brought its tasks in the making of wooden spouts, the carrying of buckets of sap and water, and the tending of fires. CHARLES D. STEWART Charles D. Stewart was born at Zanesville, Ohio, in 1868, and came with his people to Wisconsin when but a young boy. He received his elementary education in the public schools of Milwaukee, after which he attended Wayland Academy at Beaver Dam. Like many others of our authors, Mr. Stewart has had considerable connection with newspapers, but it is as an author of stories, poems, and critical articles, both in magazines and in published volumes, that he is best known. Perhaps the readers of this book are already familiar with his "The Fugitive Blacksmith," "Partners of Providence," "Essays on the Spot," "The Wrong Woman," etc. He is now executive clerk in Governor Philipp's office.