"Did you grow anything on the farm to sell, mamma?" I inquired. "I suppose not, during the first years."
"'No," said mamma; "and if we had, there would have been no market for it."
"Then what did you do for money, Aunt Esther?" said Ida. "Grandpapa had very little, you say."
"I must not forget," said mamma, "that we had one marketable production, and one that you would not easily guess.
"I wonder, Gabrielle, if your favorite chemistry goes back so far into elementary principles, as to tell you from what black salts are made? School-books seldom, I think, trouble themselves with the origin of things, so I will tell you that after the great logs were burnt that father had felled in clearing, the ashes were collected and leeched, and the lye boiled down in immense cauldrons till it became granulated like sugar. It then formed what was called 'black salts,' and these salts are the basis of potash, soda, etc. The salts could always find a ready market, and with them we paid our taxes, and bought what necessaries we could not raise ourselves."
[1] Page 62.
CHAPTER XVI.
A Birthday—A Surprise—The Day celebrated by a Dinner—An Awkward Mistake—A Queen of Fashion—A Drive to Tarrytown—A Poem to Ida.
July 16.