II

AY wrote his history about Delaware County in York State. My story-the first part-will

JA

have to be about Putnam County, on the other side of the Hudson. For I was born there in 1797. It was in Carmel, on a farm above the Lake, on the "Pond Hill Road," alongside of Whangtown Brook. Follow up that brook until you come to a hill on the left as steep as a meetinghouse roof. Climb to the top. And there, just at the fork of the road where it turns to go to Farmer's Mills, is where the house stood. There were locust trees in the front yard, and a well of cool water alongside the house, in the back yard. My father's name was Gilbert Drew. He was of English extraction. My mother was a Catherine Muckelworth, of Scotch blood, as you could guess by the name. She was a master-hand in sickness, and kept in the house a store of roots and herbs. There was boneset and pennyroyal, smartweed, catnip, skunk cabbage, sarsaparilla, wild turnip, and such like. In those days it was a good thing to have a parent that knew something about medicine. Because the saddle-bag doctor was hard to locate

just when you wanted him. He wasn't always very knowing either. "Old Bleed'em, Puke’em, and Purge'em," was what we used to call him "Old Blisters" was another name.

I didn't get much schooling - somehow never took to it. In fact there wasn't much book-learning to take to in those days. Carmel then wasn't built up around where the village now stands. What there was of the village nestled around Old Gilead Meeting-house, at the other end of the Lake from us. Old Gilead was near Mt. Pisgah, and a good two miles from my home. It was a different kind of a place from Brimstone Hollow, a mile or two beyond. Old Gilead used to be known only as "Gregory's Parish," until he preached - Parson Nathan Gregory, I mean that wonderful sermon of his from the text, "Is there no balm in Gilead?" whereby the entire meeting was so set on fire with godliness that they named the church "Gilead Meeting-house" from that day. Carmel was settled by people from Barnstable County, on Cape Cod, and had lots of religion even in its earliest days.

Well, as I started to say, in my day the preacher used to have both parishes, Gilead and another, called Red Mills, a few miles away. He would take turns, living for a spell at one place and then for a spell at the other. During his stays at Gilead he kept a school in his house. So that I got a little

education. But it was only in snatches, so to speak. When you've got to walk three miles for it, the amount of book-learning you're going to bring back with you isn't going to be very hefty. Of course, there were the spelling-bees. But I had never got much beyond the "b-a, baker," in school; and so I always got spelled down the very first time round. But I never minded that very much. I never did care two pins what people thought of me. I'd take my place in any spell-down, no matter how many people were looking on.

Then, too, even when there was a parson-teacher at Gilead, there was no end to the things that used to pop up and keep me from school. Whangtown Brook used to have some of the biggest trout you ever saw. And when a boy brings home a good string of fish for the table, his ma isn't going to scold him much for playing hookey from school. And I was needed a good deal around the farm. Not that we were poor. For those days we were comfortably well off-that is, compared to the rest of the people. We had a farm of nigh on to a hundred acres, and that was what lots of people didn't have. In those days nobody up in our part of the state had any great store of this world's goods. For this was, as everybody knows, just after the Revolutionary War. In the war, our part of York State was what was known as the Debated Country. The Red Coats were stationed down in New York City, the patriot

troops up in the neighbourhood of Albany. This left Putnam and Westchester Counties between the two, like a grain of wheat between the upper and nether mill-stones, as Scripture says. The region was well nigh ground to pieces. First the Red Coats would overrun the county. Then the Patriots would take a turn at it. Until, by the time they both got through, the farms looked about as handsome as a skinned rabbit.

Sugar was very high. We used maple sugar a good deal. Father also would drive over to Fishkill on the Hudson, and get of the store-keeper a molasses barrel after the molasses had been drawn out. In the bottom of an empty molasses barrel is a whole lot of caked molasses that makes as fine sugar as a man ever put in his mouth. But even with these shifts, sugar and sweetening were scarce things. Sometimes, when we were to have company and sweetening was scarce, mother in making a pie would sweeten only one end of it. She would place it on the table in such a way that the company would get the sweet end; and we boys, Tom and I (Tom was my brother, a little older than me), would have to steer for the sour end. Molasses was good for medicine also. Because the itch was almost everywhere in those days. It was well nigh the most bothersome complaint we had. Lice are not so serious. After you get used to them they don't bother you much. But the itch is a pestersome

thing. Unless you keep it down with a powerful hand it will break out all over you. And molassesand-sulphur was a sovereign remedy.

Tom and I had to work hard, often during school term. Father was old, mother being his second wife. And our farm, besides, was almighty rough and hilly. Some parts of it were as steep as the shingles on a house. Then there were the stones and rocks to clear away. How sick I got of prying those rocks out of the fields, with an old axle for a crowbar, and stone-boating them over to the boundaries to make fences of.

The woods were so plentiful that the farm was not of much use except for stock-raising. And stock-raising means work pretty nigh all the time. Because there were always poor spots in the fences. And, trust me, there is no critter like a heifer or a bull calf for finding weak spots in a fence, particularly if it's a line fence. And when your cattle get over into the other fellow's field, you have to get after them mighty quick. Also our pasture lots were for the most part woods. We had earmarks in those days by which we could tell our cattle

if they got mixed up with others. For example, the

left ear would be notched on the top with the right ear cropped off square and a hole in the middle. So that if we found a critter with a notch in the right ear instead of the left, we knew he belonged to somebody else. When you have to look through the