Early Augusta Memories

i can hardly be classed among the oíd pioneers of Washtenaw, and yet nearly fifty years have past since first 1 saw the light of day, down in the timbered lands oí Augusta. Of course I do not reniember'much of what took place ii the first one or two years of my residence there, but remember what did take place within a few years thereafter, perhaps quite as well as those that carne to reside there of more mature age, for the things of our childhood we remember best. For one to pass through that part of the county, now strippcd almost entirely of those gigantic forests of those early days, would scarcely believe that within the memory of one no older than ain I, it was not so very uncommon a thing to see thfi black bruine of the forests strutting leisurely through the sparsely cleared fields of the early settlers, and the beautiful deer, that have long since entirely disappeared therefrom, were then found in droves within the forests of Augusta. Those were the days of the cheerful log house, the huge place with the ponderous back log of beach wood, the iron eran e and the old bake kettle, and when the crickett sang merrily in the chimney cracks all the long winter evenings, when the apple bee and thehusking bee were the joy of the young men and maidens, when the girls were so afraid they would (not) find the red ear. Kut now all those occasions of joy and glee have been ruthlessly sWept away by the hand of invention. For the apples now go to the patent evaporator, and the corn is Kijsked by machinery or otherwise disposed of. And to-day the farmer no longer rides in the lumber wagon drawn by the spotted oxen, but in his elegant surrey, with a dashing team of bays, blacks, or greys. In those early days it was a two days' journey to Ann Arbor and return, and much of the time over such roads, clay top, Clay center and clay bottom, it you could get down to where the bottom was, but one was under the impression that the bottom had dropped out. And then agáin, another great opportunrty of joy and pleasure, which the boys of those days used so much to en joy is now gone and probably gone forever for the boys of to-day, and that was, the logging bee, where there was far more opportunity for development of muscle than there will be in our University gymnasium (if we ever get it built). And then what fine times we boys had cooning, and how the coons had to suffer; but far more numerous than the coons taken, were the quantities of melons by us captured. One incident I remember in this connection, permit me to niention. One night when we were returning from a very unsuccessful hunt, having neither coon nor meions, our old hound was bent on capturing something. So about forty rods from a farmer 's house the hound started up a cat, and away they went toward the farmer's house. There was a low summer kitchen at the back of the house with sloping roof, nearly to the ground. A chamber window of the upright part of the house opened out upon the roof, and the window was not closed. So the cat, closely pursued by the hound, who was bellowing at every jump, first took refuge on this low roof, but the hound gave an extra spring and was with one bound upon the roof, and through the open window into the chamber went cat and hound, and so on down the chamber stairs, and into the slceping room of the farmer, and then such an uproar as there was in that house - of shouts, and light and anger - isseldom lieard and enjoyed by a merry group of mischievous boys. And here, for want of time, 1 will close my recital of early reminiscences of naw county. Wm. K. Childs-. "A!(1 yOU (loii't h-licvc in a heli luiy loojgfelr?" "Xo." "Wliai a tremeadoiis reliol il nmsi lü' t-0 '.111."