And it seemed to me that we got but small return for our labour. We had a large barn full of cattle and horses, and the loft full of hay for them. A snug home for ourselves and plenty to eat and drink. We raised the flax and wool from which our clothes were made. When we killed an ox or a calf, the hide was tanned to make into shoes.
But we had very little ready money. Whatever dealings we had with our neighbours was done by exchanging goods,—trading we called it. Trading was going on all the time.
One morning, as we boys were walking up the road, and had reached the upper end of Captain Esterbrook's land, Edmund said, "Hello, Ben, look over there. Captain Joe Esterbrook and Matthew Mead are trading. Whenever you see one man sitting on a log and another walking up and down with a straw in his mouth, then they're trading. And the man with the straw in his mouth is the one anxious to have the trade go through. See how nervous Matthew is, and Captain Joe, sitting on the log whittling, looks just as calm and contented as a frog in a puddle. When you trade, Ben, don't chew a straw, but sit down and whittle. Captain Joe probably wants the trade to go through as much as Matthew does. But the whittling keeps his hands and eyes busy, and steadies his nerves. It gives him a chance to look as if he didn't care a snap about it."
TRADING
"I don't think there's any need of Captain Joe whittling," said I. "He's as keen as a razor at a trade. I was going by his place a little while ago, and he had his old horse Bjax out in front of the stable, showing him to a fur trader from the Back Country, whose horse had gone lame.
"'Yes,' says he, 'he's a fine horse, kind and sound, and I wouldn't part with him for anything, if the other one hadn't died. I had a horse called Ajax, that I got of one of the professors down to the college, and the next one I bought I called Bjax. But now that Ajax is gone, there don't seem to be no sense to the name. When I had Ajax, Bjax was all right; but Bjax alone sounds sort of ridiculous, and I'll let you have him cheap.'
"His black boy, Prince, was hanging round, looking as if a funeral was going on. He stepped up, and said, 'Oh, massa, massa. Don't sell that horse. That's just the best horse we ever had.' Then the black rascal went behind the man, winked at me and grinned."
Late in the fall, after we had killed off some of the cattle, father would load a couple of pack-horses with beef and pork, which he sold in Salem. For in those days Salem was more easily reached than Boston. Probably not more than one or two families in the town spent over twenty Spanish dollars in the course of the year.
Money came most readily to those who had a handicraft, and there was hardly a house on the main road in which there was not an artificer of some kind.
BEN APPRENTICED TO A BLACKSMITH