The next day we began operations.

A young man from the lower part of New Jersey worked with me all winter.
We boarded ourselves in the same building that we worked in, I doing all of the house-work and cooking, none of which was very fine or fancy, our principal food being pork, potatoes and bread, using our work-bench for a table.

Hard work gave us good appetite.
We would work on an average about fifteen hours a day, the house-work not occupying much of our time.

I was then only nineteen years old, and it hardly seems possible that the boys of the present day could pass through such trials and hardships, and live.

We worked in this way all winter.