The Youths Companion | Page 7

to make that evening, though it acquitted her of the first charge, left a most painful impression upon her mother that the habit of falsehood had grown upon her daughter.
"I will not add to your punishment by re-proof," she said, gravely, "because I foresee the mortification that this is going to bring to you. No explanation will convince half the gossips in town that you have not the filthy habit of using tobacco, and the story will cling to you for years."
"That's harsh and unjust!" Silvia cried, hotly. "It was a mistake anybody might have made."
"Yes, anybody who pretends to know what you are ignorant of. There is a strong likeness in the family of lies, and it is neither hard nor unjust that we should be punished for them. Your humiliation I hope may prove a salutary lesson."
It did. Silvia is rarely tempted now to her old pretences of superior knowledge. The cuspadore story brought her such pain and mortifition that the scars remain yet.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For the Companion.
IN THE BACKWOODS. In Five Chapters.--Chap. I.
By C. A. Stephens.
We were boiling down "salts" that winter in Black Ash Swamp,--not epsom salts, but an extract from the lye of wood ashes. The ashes were boiled much as maple sap is boiled in order to obtain sugar.
I do not know whether the reader ever heard of such a thing. It was one of many ventures which Edward Martin, Vet Chase and myself made when we were boys up in the Maine backwoods in order to obtain a little money.
Black Ash Swamp was four or five miles up Mud Stream, a small tributary of the Penobscot. It was situated on "wild" land, as it was called, and was full of yellow ash, black ash and elm.
We had gone there early in November. Our first work was to fell the great ash-trees and cut them up so that the wood could be burned in ricks. Many of the trees were very old, nearly lifeless, and punky at the heart; but they made an abundance of ashes.
There is no wood in the world from which such quantities of ashes can be secured; and that is the reason, I suppose, why the tree is called ash. Nor is there another tree whose ashes make so strong a lye. It was for this reason that we came here to make "salts."
We brought up on our raft twenty old flour-barrels, to be used as leach-tubs. These were set up in a semi-circle round our boiling-place, which was a long stone "arch." A pole and lumber-shed served us as a camp.
We used to sit there evenings, and by the light of the fire under the boiling kettles of lye, try to read Aesop's fables in Latin, and I never to this day take up my old Latin reader without seeming to hear the steady drip-drop of those twenty leach-tubs.
Making salts was hard work for us, though not much harder than translating some of those fables; but one needs to work to keep warm in Northern Maine in December.
In the forenoons we would all three cut and split the ash into fire-wood, then burn it and boil the ashes. Sometimes we burned eight or ten cords in a single rick, which made from seven to ten barrels of ashes. Then we poured water into the barrels, and set earthen pans or pots underneath to catch the lye as it drained through.
When our four iron kettles,--hung with "hooks" to a long pole over our arch,--were all boiling, there was a strong odor, and the steam made our eyes smart. It took a lively fire, and we made a good many ashes in the arch.
When boiled away, the lye leaves a residuum, which, in color and general appearance, resembles brown sugar. This was the "salts." It is very strong. Compared with lye, it is like the oil of peppermint compared with peppermint tea.
We had been promised six cents a pound for salts delivered at Bangor, to be refined into soda. When we met with no interruptions, we obtained from forty to fifty pounds of salts in a day. Not a very rapid way of getting rich, yet better than nothing for boys who were determined to earn something so that we could prepare for college.
But it was shocking work for the hands, handling the lye and these "salts." Round our finger nails the skin was eaten off, and the nails themselves were warped and yellowed. Often the blood followed a single accidental slop of the "juice" which settled at the bottom of the "salts." I once heard a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown