Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/567

1867.]

F the wick of the big oil lamp had been cut straight, I don't believe it would ever have happened.

Where is the poker, Johnny? Can't you push back that for'ard log a little? Dear, dear! Well, it does n't make much difference, does it? Something always seems to ail your Massachusetts fires; your hickory is green, and your maple is gnarly, and the worms eat out your oak like a sponge. I have n't seen anything like what I call a fire,—not since Mary Ann was married, and I came here to stay. "As long as you live, father," she said; and in that very letter she told me I should always have an open fire, and how she would n't let Jacob put in the air-tight in the sitting-room, but had the fire-place kept on purpose. Mary Ann was a good girl always, if I remember straight, and I 'm sure I don't complain. Is n't that a pine-knot at the bottom of the basket? There! that 's better.

Let me see; I began to tell you something, did n't I? O yes; about that winter of '41. I remember now. I declare, I can 't get over it, to think you never heard about it, and you twenty-four year old come Christmas. You don't know much more, either, about Maine folks and Maine fashions than you do about China,—though it 's small wonder, for the matter of that, you were such a little shaver when Uncle Jed took you. There were a great many of us, it seems to me, that year, I 'most forget how many;—we buried the twins next summer, did n't we?—then there was Mary Ann, and little Nancy, and—well, coffee was dearer than ever I'd seen it, I know, about that time, and butter selling for nothing; we just threw our milk away, and there was n't any market for eggs; besides doctor's bills and Isaac to be sent to school; so it seemed to be the best thing, though your mother took on pretty badly about it at first. Jedediah has been good to you, I 'm sure, and brought you up religious,—though you 've cost him a sight, spending three hundred and fifty dollars a year at Amherst College.

But, as I was going to say, when I started to talk about '41,—to tell the truth, Johnny, I 'm always a long while coming to it, I believe. I 'm getting to be an old man,—a little of a coward, maybe, and sometimes, when I sit alone here nights, and think it over, it 's just like the toothache, Johnny. As I was saying, if she had cut that wick straight, I do believe it would n't have happened,—though it is n't that I mean to lay the blame on her now.

I 'd been out at work all day about the place, slicking things up for tomorrow; there was a gap in the barn-yard fence to mend,—I left that till the last thing, I remember,—I remember everything, some way or other, that happened that day,—and there was a new roof to put on the pig-pen, and the grape-vine needed an extra layer of straw, and the latch was loose on the south barn door; then I had to go round and take a last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows, and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton the coop door to see if the hens looked warm,—just to tuck 'em up, as you might say. I always felt sort of homesick—though I wouldn't have owned up to it, not even to Nancy—saying good by to the creeturs the night before I went in. There, now! it beats all, to think you don't know what I 'm talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is going up into the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter,—up, sometimes, a hundred miles deep,—in in the fall and out in the spring; whole gangs of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down with the freshets