The Youths Companion | Page 7

you talking of Silvia?"
Gentle Mrs. Morden's face was pale as she turned her startled eyes on
her visitor.
"Who else? Don't you think it a disgrace for a girl to use tobacco? and
that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole
town! I'd tobacco her! But everybody knows it by this time, and
whether she gives it up or not, people will keep on thinking she uses it.
You always did give that girl too much head, I've told you so time and
again, and now you see you'd better have taken my advice."
Mrs. Morden had regained her calmness by this time.
"There is certainly some mistake," she said, coolly. "I will ask Silvia
about it when she comes in."

"You'll find it no mistake," said her visitor. "At least half-a-dozen
people were in Morris's this evening when she asked for the spittoon,
and then got mad with the clerk about something."
The explanation Silvia was compelled 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