Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ... 200 CHAPTER X. September. For the last two days of the preceding month, it had been as we have just said, peaches, peaches, nothing but peaches! It seemed quite like a repetition of the pigeons in February. The children's mother often said, that while there was always in this bountiful land more than enough to eat, yet that every now and then plenty set in in springtides, and then there was really such a superabundance of some one thing, that the only difficulty was to know what to do with it. As an instance of this, it may be told that one of the poorest women they knew, and, in fact, "the lady" who condescended to wash for them, was once complaining bitterly of her poverty, and of the hardship she had to endure, which she proved by saying, that during the preceding week, which was the time of pig-killing, she had been unable to get any variety of food, and that for four days running, she had been obliged to eat pig's head for dinner! This then was the flood-tide of peaches; and it was particularly observable this year, because the crop was unusually large. They had made whole skins of peach-leather; they had dried them; preserved them as jam and marmalade; they had converted them into cider, and made pies of them till they were quite tired; they had given them away, and sold them at market, and fed the pigs with them, and yet they were not ended; and it seemed as if they never would end. A large bag of maple sugar was sent to them as a present, from the happy farmer's family, who lived in the log-house among the sugar-maples, beyond Union Village. Maple sugar was like every thing else, remarkably plentiful this year, and was sold at seven cents the pound. It was a pleasure to our friends to think as they made use of this sugar, that no...