At home and at school we were educated to hate the English.

When we remember that, every Fourth of July, the Declaration was read with emphasis, and the orator of the day rounded all his glowing periods with denunciations of the mother country, we need not wonder at the national hatred of everything English.

Our patriotism in those early days was measured by our dislike of Great Britain.
In September occurred the great event, the review of the county militia, popularly called "Training Day." Then everybody went to the race course to see the troops and buy what the farmers had brought in their wagons.
There was a peculiar kind of gingerbread and molasses candy to which we were treated on those occasions, associated in my mind to this day with military reviews and standing armies.
Other pleasures were, roaming in the forests and sailing on the mill pond.

One day, when there were no boys at hand and several girls were impatiently waiting for a sail on a raft, my sister and I volunteered to man the expedition.

We always acted on the assumption that what we had seen done, we could do.