When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat two hundred miles in wagons
and sell it for thirty-five cents a bushel. They would bring home about
three hundred feet of lumber, two bunches of shingles, a barrel of salt,
and a cook-stove that never would draw and never did bake.
In those blessed days the people lived on corn and bacon. Cooking was
an unknown art. Eating was a necessity, not a pleasure. It was hard work
for the cook to keep on good terms even with hunger. We had poor houses.
The rain held the roofs in perfect contempt, and the snow drifted
joyfully on the floors and beds. They had no barns. The horses were kept
in rail pens surrounded with straw. Long before spring the sides would
be eaten away and nothing but roofs would be left. Food is fuel. When
the cattle were exposed to all the blasts of winter, it took all
the corn and oats that could be stuffed into them to prevent actual
starvation. In those times farmers thought the best place for the
pig-pen was immediately in front of the house. There is nothing like
sociability. Women were supposed to know the art of making fires without
fuel. The wood-pile consisted, as a general thing, of one log, upon
which an axe or two had been worn out in vain. There was nothing
to kindle a fire with. Pickets were pulled from the garden fence,
clap-boards taken from the house, and every stray plank was seized upon
for kindling. Everything was done in the hardest way. Everything about
the farm was disagreeable.