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LOOKING OVER ESAU’S LINE FENCE AT THE WRITER

Photograph taken in 1907 while on a Moose Hunt.

We were very poor financially, and as I was second-oldest boy in a family of ten children, I had to put a shoulder to the wheel and help roll the bread-wagon. The result is I was educated for ditching, cutting cord-wood, and splitting rails. In the spring of 1878 father decided to migrate, and at the age of thirteen I was liberated here in Canada, a sportman’s paradise. I took to the woods as naturally as a park hare, and I know I was father’s favorite because he always called me to build the fire in the morning, and when the other boys would lodge a tree I have often heard him shout, “Come out and come away from it! You’ll get ’urt! Leave it w’ile Jack comes; ’e’ll go hunder and cut it down.” If we were splitting rails, father always set the wedges, permitting me to handle the maul.

Father and mother enjoyed life together nearly sixty years and put up with the mingled enjoyment and annoyance of us ten children. How some of father’s teachings still ring in my ears! When I have gone to him with complaints about others he has often said, “Shut up; I don’t want to ’ear it. But if you have some of your own failings to tell, let’s ’ear ’um.” Yes, he was always short but to the point. One piece of advice that he gave us boys I have always tried to practise; that was: whenever we grabbed hold of anything and found it was red-hot, to drop it.