Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1883 — Books and Maple Sugar Eighty Year Ago. [ARTICLE]

Books and Maple Sugar Eighty Year Ago.

In his autobiography, ThurlowWeed gives an interestmg picture of boy-life in a new country eighty years ago. He says: “My uncle had a small clearing, with an extra log-house, into which we moved. My first employment was in sugar-making, an occupation to which I became much attached. I now look with great pleasure upon the days and pights passed in the sap-bush. The want of shoes (which, as the snow was deep, was no small privation) was the only drawback upon my happiness. I used, however, to tie an .old rag carpet around my feet and get along chopping wood and gathering sap pretty well. But when the spring advanced, and bare ground appeared in spots, I threw off the old carpet incumbrance and did my work barefooted. “There is much leisure time for boys who are making maple sugar. I devoted this time to reading, when I could obtain books. I borrowed books whenever and wherever I could. I remember to have heard that a neighbor, some three miles -off, had borrowed from a still more distant neighbor a book of great interest, and, after this book had been read by those better entit ed to the privilege, I started off, barefooted, in the snow, to obtain the treasure. There were spot 3of bare ground, upon which I would stop to warm my feet. And there were also, along the road, occasional lengths of log fence from which the snow had melted, and upon which it was a luxury to walk. The book was at home, and the good people consented, upon my promise that it should be neither torn nor soiled, to lend it to me. In returning with the prize, I wa3 too happy to think of the snow or my naked feet. Candles were then among the luxuries, not the necessaries, of -life. If boys, instead of going to bed after dark, wanted to read, they supplied themselves with pine knots, by the light of which (in a horizontal position) they pursued their studies. “In this manner, with my body in the sugar-house, and my head out of doors where the fat pine was blazing, I read with intense interest a ‘History of the French Revolution. ’ ’*