CHRISTMAS I[N AMERICA. 7

The people generally remembered the parson at “ killing-
time,” and generously sent him spare-ribs, turkeys, and geese,
He was so well provided for with poultry at this season by
others, that he was never known to kill any of his own.

“T would n’t kill a chicken,” he used to say, “if I had to live
on corn bread all the year. I sell all my poultry to the hen-
cart.”

Just what the hen-cart man did with the parson’s poultry, the
good man never cared to investigate. The hen-cart always went
outside of the mountain hemlocks that bordered the quiet town.

Grandmother Pool was a person of different fibre. At “ kill-
ing-time” at the parsonage, she went round with her sleeves
rolled up, ready for the fray. When she mounted the gig, and
said “ Go lang,” old Dolly put back her ears, and her stiffened
legs flew like drum-sticks. Grandfather used to have to speak
to me about the same thing often, but I very distinctly remem-
ber that grandmother, after giving me one or two very impres-
sive lessons, never had to speak to me in that way but once.
Grandmother was zof a popular woman in the parish.

Parson Pool liked to raise poultry. He would often bring
up a large brood of chickens by hand, and his flock of hens
would follow him about the farm whenever he went out to
walk. In the summer afternoons we used to go up ona hill
together, which commanded almost as fine a view of the green
mountain walls and the bald summits of Washington and La-
fayette as does the Bald Mountain itself. Then we would sit
down and watch the shadows of the clouds on the pine-covered
mountain sides, as they sailed along like ghosts of the air.
When Grandmother Pool asked us where we were going, as we
set out for these excursions, he would often answer, ‘“‘ Hens’
nesting.”