till next day. At the depot we were met by my younger brother, J. w., and took a street-car for his house (for the streets and crossings were a perfect slush of mud and water), when we again met a joyous welcome. It was the first time I had ever been permitted to set foot under his roof, and my mind fleeted back nearly fifty years. to the death of our parents, when I was only a little boy or four summers and brother less than a year old, then coming up through the long years since, of all checkered scenes of life with its ups and downs, till now there are four brothers of us living in as many States, all surrounded by grown-up families. It afforded me unusual pleasure in my talks with my older brother of those olden times, when living with our grandfather on the old homestead in Bourbon Co., Ky., where he settled in 1798 (coining from Delaware) on sixty acres of land (all he ever desired to own), almost all of which was covered with heavy timber, cane-brake, and grapevines. How he raised and educated a large family on the home-spun and economic customs of that day. Everything used by the family for food and clothing was produced and manufactured almost exclusively on the farm, by the family, With the help of work exchanged by the neighbors, the house was built of hewn blue-ash logs, with stone chimneys, the cracks chinked and pointed with lime burned on the place, the rafters, joists, and sleepers were hewn out, while the sheeting, shingles, and weatherboarding were all made with a common frow and drawing-knife, and all put on with a gimlet and wooden pegs (no nails being used); the flooring, doors, and sills were all made of lumber sawed out by hand with a whip saw; the hinges, latches, locks and keys were all of wood and homemade, a as was also much of the furniture in the house, and all the carpets, table-linens. and bedding were home-made, entirely. The flax and wool that made the clothing was never off the place till worn on the body: the summer hats were made of rye straw, and winter caps of yarn; the shoes (for no boots were worn then) were made at home (only the iron and steel in the awl, knife, and hammer were foreign), from leather tanned in the neighborhood, of the hides of beeves, killed by the family, and the tanning paid for in tan-bark from the farm; the sugar and syrup was made from the sugar-maple trees, more than was needed (wish we had some of the surplus now);

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