HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MEDFORD, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, IN 1630, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1855.
Charles Brooks, Ed.

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[461] bayou! How different from him the laughing-loon, catching minnows in the shallows of a creek! Mark the majestic sailing of the eagle through the deep of air; and contrast this with the bittern, driving his post in the meadow. Then there is the owl, Nature's watchman, waiting for the dawning of his day, which is sundown. Listen to his midnight love-note, which seems discord and sighs hooted at the moon; and see him shoot through a tangled forest in the dark, as if every tree and twig made way for him! And, last of all, give an ear the whippoorwill, as he sings with clear and healthy note his matins and vespers.

Group together all these joys and teachings of animated nature, each so friendly to man, and all so abundant and so lofty, and how could the witnesses of them be weary or sorrowful? We believe they were not; but, on the contrary, they joined the general chorus with loving and devoted hearts, making the whole earth an altar of thanksgiving, and the whole heavens the witness of their joy.

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Daily and domestic habits.

We may get the truest ideas of these by watching, through two days, all the plans and movements of that family in the log-hut on the banks of the Mystic. We will take Saturday and Sunday. Let us look closely. The father is a strong man of forty-six, with a true Puritan heart; and his wife is seven years his junior, with good health and without anxiety. Their first child is a son, eighteen years old; the next is a daughter of sixteen; then come three boys, their ages fourteen, eleven, and eight; and the youngest child is a daughter, aged six. Of hired men or women, they had none. Extra help came from what they called “change work.”

Let us first mark the cares and labors of the farmer and his boys. Saturday was a busy day with them; although one day's or one year's experience was almost exactly like another's.

To rise early was not considered worthy of any remark; while not rising early would have been deemed a crime. To be up before daylight was a matter of course with every family. The father was expected to move first; to strike a light with flint and steel; to kindle a fire under the kettle in which the water for the porrdge was to be boiled. This done,