"Then he could talk a-plenty."
I reminded him that when he was about five years old his father had gone to Gregory to pay his tax, having his pocket full of money from the sale of his crop. His poor mother walked the road all night with the baby in her arms hoping for his return. He was an excellent man, faithful to all his duties, a splendid worker, but he could not resist "fire water."
When I heard in the morning that he had not returned, and the other men who went with him had, I had Elihu get the pony carriage and drive down the road until he found him and bring him home, as the men said he had dropped asleep on the road and they could not rouse him, so they came on and left him. It was a bitter night, one of the three or four freezes we have during the winter, and I knew it would go hard with him.
Elihu found him eight miles away, got help and put him in the pony carriage, for Emanuel was a tall, heavy man, and drove rapidly home; but life was extinct when he reached the poor wife. I had sent beef tea and stimulant to be given him, but though Elihu found him alive, he could not force anything down; he seemed unable to swallow.
Lisbeth nearly went crazy; she had seven children to support by her own labors. As time passed she quieted down and having her house and firewood and two acres of land free of all rent and owning a fine pair of oxen and a cow, she got on very comfortably and brought up her children respectably.
When her only daughter, Aphrodite, married and her two oldest sons went to "town" to work and were making a dollar a day, she felt as though her troubles were over. But the same Devil's chain gripped and held her eldest son Zebedee.
He was a splendid boatman and was as much at home in the water as a duck. He owned a canoe and made an easy living, at the same time satisfying his love of sport by taking strangers out ducking. Many Northern people come to Gregory every winter for that sport.
Last January and February we had several bitter spells of weather with a prolonged freeze and snow. During one of these, when ducks were especially plentiful, Zeb took a stranger out. Late that afternoon they met another sportsman, paddled by a darky, and the parties spoke and commented on the unusual cold; and Zeb produced his bottle of dispensary, offering it to the other paddler, while his sportsman also produced a flask and urged it upon the second sportsman, who being near his home and its bright fire declined it and suggested to Sportsman No. 1 that he should land and not go on shooting, it was so cold.