Part 4 (1/2)

The first suit of clothes I re, she cut and made Then the quilts and coverlids she pieced and quilted! We used, too, in my boyhood to make over two tons of butter annually, the care of which devolvedof the butter in the tubs and firkins, though the churning was co We made our own cheese, also As a boy I used to help do the wheying, and I took toll out of the sweet curd OneI ate so much of the curd that I was completely cloyed, and could eat none after that

I can re away hour after hour in the cha a carpet, or cloth I used to help do so the yarn or linen thread upon spools to be used in the shuttles The distaff, the quill-wheel, the spinning-wheel, the reel, were very fale, the hetchel, for Father grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our shi+rts and su those shi+rts, when new, made a boy's skin pretty red I dare say they were quite equal to a hair shi+rt to do penance in; and wiping on a new ho on a brier bush Dearit has been since I have seen any tow, or heard a loo in his new flax-s any ; she learned to read, but not to write or cipher; hence, books and such interests took none of her ti natural traits and wholesome instincts, devoted to her children; she bore ten, and nursed thehbor, and a provident housewife, with the virtues that belonged to so lad to be able to enue fra brow, and a straight nose with a strong bridge to it She was a woht

She scolded a good deal, but was not especially quick-tempered She was an Old-School Baptist, as was Father

She was not of a vivacious or sunny disposition--always a little in shadow, as it see upon the more serious aspects of life How little she knew of all that has been done and thought in the world! and yet the burden of it all was, in a way, laid upon her The seriousness of Revolutionary times, out of which came her father and mother, was no doubt reflected in her own serious disposition As I have said, her happiness was always shaded, never in a strong light; and the sadness whichheart beget was upon her I seecan satisfy I share with her Whatever is round of feeling, of pity, of love comes from her

She was of a very different tempera, inarticulate nature She was richly endoith all the womanly instincts and affections She had a decided preference for Abigail and o to school, and was always interceding with Father to get me books

She never read one of e of seventy-three I had published four of my books then

She had had a stroke of apoplexy in the fall of 1879, but lived till Dece on father's seventy-seventh birthday (He lived four years more) We could understand but little of what she said after she was taken ill She used to repeat a line froood deal of some verses I wrote--”My Brother's Farm”--and had them framed (You have seen theton the fall that you were born I was sick and forlorn at the time)

I owe to Mother , introspective habit of ive atmosphere to his work In her line were dreamers and fishermen and hunters One of her uncles lived alone in a little house in the woods His hut was doubtless the original Slabsides Grandfather Kelly was a lover of solitude, as all dreamers are, and Mother's happiest days, I think, were those spent in the fields after berries

The Celtic eleet mostly from her side, has no doubt played an important part in ely her gift

On my father's side I find no fisherious strain, ion of the Kellys was, for the most part, of the silent, meditative kind, but there are preachers and teachers and scholars on Father's side--one of theade preacher

Doubtless most of my own intellectual impetus comes from this side of the family There are also cousins and second cousins on this side who became preachers, and some who became physicians, but I recall none on the Kelly side

In size and physical make-up I am much like my father I have my father's foot, and I detect , when I aet from him The Kellys are more apt to bite I see myself, too, in my brothers, in their looks and especially in their weaknesses Take from me my special intellectual equip of their characteristics as a fahs says that they have absolute inability to harbor resentment (a Celtic trait); that they never have ”cheek” to ask enough for what they have to sell, lack decision, and are easily turned fro on this, he has often said: ”We are weak as men--do not make ourselves felt in the community But this very weakness is a help to et very close to bird and beast My thin skin lets the shy and delicate influences pass I can surrender myself to Nature without effort I a with impersonal Nature, and ad in moral fibre, but ahs stand and fondly gaze upon the fruitful, well-cultivated fields that his father had cared for so many years, to hear him say that the hills are like father andis the filial instinct in hi As he stood on the crest of the big hill by the pennyroyal rock, looking down on the peaceful hoht of a midsummer afternoon, his eye roamed fondly over the scene:--

”How fertile and fruitful it is now, but how lonely and bleak the old place looked in that winter landscape the night I drove up fro of Father's death! There was a light in the , but I knew Father would notwinter without, and Death within!

”Father and Mother! I think of the, wrapped in their last eternal sleep They had, for theion of serious, si lives To believe as they did, to sit in their pews, is impossible to me--the Time-Spirit has decreed otherwise; but all I am or can be or achieve is to emulate their virtues--my soul can be saved only by a like truthfulness and sincerity”

The following data concerning his brothers and sisters were given hs in conversation:--

Hiram, born in 1827, was an unpractical reat aptitude in the use of tools, could s used about the far stone walls But he could not elbow his way in a crowd, could notpay, and was always pushed to the wall He cared nothing for books, and although he studied grarae of seventy-five

Olly Ann was about two years younger than Hirairl, with dark-brown eyes, a high forehead, and a wasp-like waist She had a fair education for her time, married and had two children, and died in early womanhood of phthisis

Wilson was a farmer, thrifty and economical He married but had no children He was evidently soroan and ht, after a short illness, of a delirious fever

Curtis also was a farht if he gave his note a debt was canceled, and went on piling up other indebtedness He had a very , but was apt at witty rens of the Times,” like his father before him He married and had five children

For many years previous to his death he lived at the hohtieth year, in the summer of 1912 Two of his unmarried children still live at the Old Home,--of all places on the earth the one tohich Mr Burroughs turns with thefondness

Edmund died in infancy