beyond their years, and contracted a love for the occupation, especially Clem, who seemed to inherit all the patience, energy and originality of his father, together with an

here a better quality of work was

to struggle with-to accomplish much. I've done the best I could; but I want you to have a better chance. I think you've both got the m

ity for that kind of work, while Robert proved an excellent shoer, and had but few equals in wheel-tiring and all kinds of carriage work. He could also make a wheel as well as iron it, and manifested his father's ability for

aking edge tools, while Robert attended to the other portion of the work. Business was good, and they accumulated property, and fre

leaving, the boys would have loaded him with tools,-"swages," "fullers," "screw

seen all the tools you have here, and been round among the shops and seen all the ways they do their work, and I'll go home and make every one of these tools; and I th

d steel on board the sloop in which he started to return by the way of

d strengthened as they grew older. Lucy was a girl of excellent abilities, the best scholar in the school, and as she grew up manifested qualities that are not often united. She poss

g

ren of her own to draw out her affections and sweeten her disposition. She made poor Lucy serve with rigor. She was poorly clad, poorly fed, went barefoot in the summer and till late in the fall, was obliged to work both out doors and in. When dropping corn and potatoes in the spring, her feet were red as a pigeon's with col

orporated and the ordinances of the gospel established, she went to meeting every Sabbath. School days and Sundays were the[Pg 105] green spots, and all the green spots, in Lucy's cheerless life of incessant toil, save the few moments when sent

girls nowadays think of. Wonder what they expec

especially as her uncle had made his will, and left all his property to a nephew as close-fisted as himself. He

, why don't you do it? What do you let her stay there for, suffer everything but death, slave herself, and dry up, working for that o

ly. You know I'm like father-one of the kind to cut my garment accord

board with you. Nothing comes amiss to her; she's a treasure of a girl, smart as steel, and pleas

proved a false prophetess. In two years they were blessed with a nice baby. Clem and Robert had all the work they could do, the hammer going every evening till nine o'clock in the winter months, though they still lived in two rooms, with the privilege of another for occasional use. The

g

ing died some years before him, and the daughters receiving their portion in money. The shop remained as it was; Clem would have nothing touched. It was not, to be sure, the original log hovel; but it was the same forge, and the building stood on the same spot. The old pin

say, Clement Richardson and his wife, although retaining their simple and industrious habits, felt that they did not want their children to work as hard as they had; and going to the other extreme, while afford

shoes. The good fortune of stumbling upon Morton for a while roused the energies that lay buried beneath t

hock of an earthquake, effectually roused Rich from his poetic reveries and visions of high art, rent with a rude h

re money and run the risk of losing that. He and his brother, stimulated by the high price of lumber at that time, and intoxicated by good fortune in lesser adventures, hired money largely, and[Pg 109] expended every dollar of their own in land and logs. They had a good drive, early in the spring the logs were in the booms, and the mills running night and

who, although she knew that great loss would follow the breaking of the booms, was u

n composing. After the children had retired, Lucy Richardson sat sewing, wondering at the continued absence of her husband and his brother, and listening to t

my husba

g

bert are watch

ment Richardson came in; he was pal

o the Atlantic, the mills with them, and it will take all our real estate, furniture, and the house over our heads to pay the money we've b

e, husband; but it migh

w can a man lose

and I am sure it would be worse to lose character, which you won't if you have property enough left to pay all you owe. It would certainly have been worse had it

it is too late. We[Pg 111] thought we had enough for them and us, an

hat. They are not

dollars, as the remnant of a large property. David Montague was dead; but his son Andrew inherited not only his father's property, but his principles. One of the creditors, he bid off the old Richardson homestead, house, shop, and out

-spirited, and I love you all the better for it; but I beg of you, let me do this much. There is the old shop; nothing has been disturbed; and there are the tools your father began with, and those more mod

n that old hammer that lies on the anvil where father left it. The first blow I ever struck on iro

dle age, fitting a horse-shoe at the anvil. Another person, of about the same age, but more slightly built, was tearing the shoe from a horse's foot. A bar of iron was heating in the fire, apparently to make a new shoe, and at the bellows stood Rich, the glory of Radcliffe, class poet, elegant scholar; those finely-cu