Many of our old neighbors toiled and sweated and grubbed themselves
into their graves years before their natural dying days, in getting a
living on a quarter-section of land and vaguely trying to get rich,
while bread and raiment might have been serenely won on less than a
fourth of this land, and time gained to get better acquainted with
God.
I was put to the plough at the age of twelve, when my head reached but
little above the handles, and for many years I had to do the greater
part of the ploughing. It was hard work for so small a boy;
nevertheless, as good ploughing was exacted from me as if I were a
man, and very soon I had to become a good ploughman, or rather
ploughboy. None could draw a straighter furrow. For the first few
years the work was particularly hard on account of the tree-stumps
that had to be dodged. Later the stumps were all dug and chopped out
to make way for the McCormick reaper, and because I proved to be the
best chopper and stump-digger I had nearly all of it to myself. It was
dull, hard work leaning over on my knees all day, chopping out those
tough oak and hickory stumps, deep down below the crowns of the big
roots.
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