Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/200

186 black had taken the place of the rags he had so lately worn. It was no easy task for him to conquer his appetite for strong drink. Those who witnessed the struggle never forgot it. They pitied and helped him, and Mrs. Benson lived to see her husband entirely cured. For a time they fondly hoped and believed her better, but toward spring she grew worse. It was her great desire to return to her old home, where she had passed her happy girlhood days, and the first of May they departed from M. She bore up wonderfully and when they reached home, declared herself better than when she started, but as soon as the excitement and pleasure of reaching her loved home was over, in a measure, she began to sink, and there came a day, at last, when her weeping friends gathered around her bedside to receive her last, kind, loving words. Clara had been summoned home, and with all her friends surrounding her, Mrs. Benson breathed her last.

Margie had already become the light of her grandmother's home, and as soon as her grief at her mother's death had in a measure subsided, she began to look eagerly forward to an education, and succeeded in becoming an accomplished woman. Mr. Benson entered the large establishment of Roden & Co., as clerk, and came to be much respected by all who associated with him. Most especially was he noted for his kindness to those who were treading the downward path, he had once trod, and more than one owed their entire reform to him.

In the early days of this township, the domestic customs were copied from the olden districts of Massachusetts, and were largely in common with those of all rural New England, so far as the conditions of this primative wilderness would allow. The dwellings were at first small and incommodious, as well as built of logs. Such habitations were often if not always floorless, with seldom if ever more than one room, though they might have afforded a loft for the depositing of articles, or for other purposes. An open fire place and a chimney, and sometimes an oven, were necessary appendages of a local domestic establishment. Subsequently to the log hut followed the framed house. Framed houses were largely built upon a substantially uniform plan. A huge chimney stack, a brick oven and fire places proportioned in number to the represented competency of the owner, occupied a central position in every dwelling. The back part of the house was mostly taken up by the kitchen, which was often flanked on one side by three small apartments—a buttery, an entry and a cellar-way. The last was generally surmounted by a stair-way leading to the chamber or attic, by a door leading from the entry. A front room and an entry, the latter in front of the chimney stack, and often large enough to contain a bed, completed the accommodations of the lower floor. The chamber was generally an open space covered by the naked roof. This description, however, applies to the house of the poorer resident. Sometimes an additional joint, affording two extra rooms, a front and a back, was built to the structure; sometimes, also, the original plan allowed two, square front rooms, a front entry, and a kitchen in the rear, flanked by such accommodations as the taste of the builder