Lucinda there was our first child. I
buried a little boy younger than Nathan. A few kind settlers gathered
together and laid him in his grave without a minister to perform the
rites of burial. I buried another son and daughter, and all that's left
to me now are Lucinda and Nathan, and your mother, who was my youngest
child; as my children grew older I learned the value of the tolerable
education I had myself received. For many years such a thing as a school
was out of the question, and all the leisure time I could command I
spent in teaching my children. Nathan was slow at learning, but it did
beat all, how smart Lucinda was at her book. I could never tell how she
learned her letters; I may say she picked them up herself, and with a
very little assistance was soon able to read. Other settlers came among
us from time to time, and bye-and-bye we had both a school and a
meeting-house. I tell you, Walter, when I now sit at the door, and look
around me over the beautiful farms, with their orchards and smooth
meadow-lands, and further away the gleaming spire of the village church,
and hear the sharp shriek of the locomotive (I believe they call it) and
call to mind the log-hut in the depth of the forest, which was, my first
home on this farm, I am lost in wonder at the changes which have taken
place, and I cannot help repeating the words, 'old things have passed
away, behold all things have become new.
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