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→Early Married Life: partial
==Early Married Life==
When the big brothers wished to tease Aunt Bess, they used to say: "Bess remembers things that happened before she was born." I think this came about from her habit of saying, "I remember" when relating things she had heard so many times that she actually thought she remembered them. So I will not say I remember the things I am about to relate.
My father continued, for some years after his marriage to work int he shop of Mr. Platner. My brother Emory, three years and a half my senior, and I were born in Westford. Very small must have been the beginning, very simple the furnishing of the little home, compared to the way young people begin married life now. Both husband and wife were industrious and frugal. I have heard my father say, from the time he earned his first wages he was never without money in his pocket. If he earned only a dollar, he spent less than a dollar. If he earned only a few cents, he spent still less; if indeed, he must spend at all. To spend all he had, or to contract a debt, was not to be so much as thought of.
I remember a very few things that belonged to that first housekeeping. I wish I might have now some of the dark blue plates, with their wonderful pictures, that fascinated me as a child, and held their charm until I was a big girl. Then there were knives with bone handles, fastened on by steel rivets. The forks had two slender tines, that father declared were "just the handiest things in the world to pick a chicken's neck with." I remember the operation. One tine was inserted in the passage of the cord, held firmly, and joint after joint dislocated, and removed. How I wished <u>I</u> could do it!
==South Hill Farm==
==Child Life on the Farm==