Some, though fortunately not many, were two feet or more in
diameter.
And as I was the eldest boy, the greater part of all the other hard
work of the farm quite naturally fell on me. I had to split rails for
long lines of zigzag fences. The trees that were tall enough and
straight enough to afford one or two logs ten feet long were used for
rails, the others, too knotty or cross-grained, were disposed of in
log and cordwood fences. Making rails was hard work and required no
little skill. I used to cut and split a hundred a day from our short,
knotty oak timber, swinging the axe and heavy mallet, often with sore
hands, from early morning to night. Father was not successful as a
rail-splitter. After trying the work with me a day or two, he in
despair left it all to me. I rather liked it, for I was proud of my
skill, and tried to believe that I was as tough as the timber I
mauled, though this and other heavy jobs stopped my growth and earned
for me the title "Runt of the family."
In those early days, long before the great labor-saving machines came
to our help, almost everything connected with wheat-raising abounded
in trying work,--cradling in the long, sweaty dog-days, raking and
binding, stacking, thrashing,--and it often seemed to me that our
fierce, over-industrious way of getting the grain from the ground was
too closely connected with grave-digging.
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