Summer was fast slipping away. Our summer boarders were talking of home.
One of our boarders, Mr. William Hill, was anxious to take my brother
Charley home with him, put him to school and teach him the engineer's
trade. It was all talked over and settled that Charley was to go. We
children could not realize much about what it meant. My eldest brother
had been one winter with the same man. Charley was to remain with Mr.
Hill until he was twenty-one, he being past ten now. Papers were made
out and signed. Mother prepared all the clothes for her boy that was
going away to another home. I remember so well seeing the tears rolling
down her cheeks as she sewed and stitched far into the night, making the
little jackets that Charley was to wear in his far away new home. She
sacrificed her own feeling that her boy might have an education, and a
good trade when he became a man. The time had now come for Charley to
go. Father and mother had grown thin and pale. The packing began. Mother
could not finish and neighbors had to come in and finish it for her.