DRi and I | Page 7

work" with the neighbors, and after we had
helped them awhile they turned to in the clearing of our farm. We
felled the trees in long, bushy windrows, heaping them up with brush
and small wood when the chopping was over. That done, we fired the
rows, filling the deep of heaven with smoke, as it seemed to me, and
lighting the night with great billows of flame.
By mid-autumn we had cleared to the stumps a strip half down the
valley from our door. Then we turned to on the land of our neighbors,
my time counting half, for I was sturdy and could swing the axe to a
line, and felt a joy in seeing the chips fly. But my father kept an eye on
me, and held me back as with a leash,
My mother was often sorely tried for the lack of things common as dirt
these better days. Frequently our only baking-powder was white lye,
made by dropping ash-cinders into wafer. Our cinders were made by
letting the sap of green timber drip into hot ashes. Often deer's tallow,
bear's grease, or raccoon's oil served for shortening, and the leaves of
the wild raspberry for tea. Our neighbors went to mill at Canton--a
journey of five days, going and coming, with an ox-team, and beset
with many difficulties. Then one of them hollowed the top of a stump
for his mortar and tied his pestle to the bough of a tree. With a rope he

drew the bough down, which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle that
ground his grain.
But money was the rarest of all things in our neighborhood those days.
Pearlash, black-salts, West India pipe-staves, and rafts of timber
brought cash, but no other products of the early settler. Late that fall
my mother gave a dance, a rude but hearty pleasuring that followed a
long conference in which my father had a part. They all agreed to turn
to, after snowfall, on the river-land, cut a raft of timber, and send it to
Montreal in the spring. Our things had come, including D'ri's fiddle, so
that we had chairs and bedsteads and other accessories of life not
common among our neighbors. My mother had a few jewels and some
fine old furniture that her father had given her,--really beautiful things,
I have since come to know,--and she showed them to those simple folk
with a mighty pride in her eyes.
Business over, D'ri took down his fiddle, that hung on the wall, and
made the strings roar as he tuned them. Then he threw his long right leg
over the other, and, as be drew the bow, his big foot began to pat the
floor a good pace away. His chin lifted, his fingers flew, his bow
quickened, the notes seemed to whirl and scurry, light-footed as a rout
of fairies. Meanwhile the toe of his right boot counted the increasing
tempo until it came up and down like a ratchet.
Darius Olin was mostly of a slow and sober manner. To cross his legs
and feel a fiddle seemed to throw his heart open and put him in full
gear. Then his thoughts were quick, his eyes merry, his heart was a
fountain of joy. He would lean forward, swaying his head, and shouting
"Yip!" as the bow hurried. D'ri was a hard-working man, but the feel of
the fiddle warmed and limbered him from toe to finger. He was
over-modest, making light of his skill if he ever spoke of it, and had no
ear for a compliment. While our elders were dancing, I and others of
my age were playing games in the kitchen--kissing-games with a rush
and tumble in them, puss-in-the-corner, hunt-the-squirrel, and the like.
Even then I thought I was in love with pretty Rose Merriman. She
would never let me kiss her, even though I had caught her and had the
right. This roundelay, sung while one was in the centre of a circling

group, ready to grab at the last word, brings back to me the sweet faces,
the bright eyes, the merry laughter of that night and others like it:
Oh, hap-py is th' mil-ler who lives by him-self! As th' wheel gos round,
he gath-ers in 'is wealth, One hand on the hop-per and the oth-er on the
bag; As the wheel goes round, he cries out, "Grab!" Oh, ain't you a
lit-tle bit a-shamed o' this, Oh, ain't you a lit-tle bit a-sham'd o' this, Oh,
ain't you a lit-tle bit a-sham'd o' this--To stay all night for one sweet
kiss? Oh, etc.
[Transcriber's note: A Lilypond (www.lilypond.org) rendition of this
song is at the end of this e-book.]
My mother gave me all the schooling I had that winter. A year