“What’s he done?” Joe asked.

“Ketched sheep and pigs and fawns and run off with ’em.”

“What does he do with ’em?”

“Eats ’em up.  Now you quit.  Here’s a lot o’ rocks and mud and I got to ’tend to business.  You tackle yer mother and chase her up and down the hills a while and let me get my breath.”

Samson’s diary tells how, at the top of the long, steep hills he used to cut a small tree by the roadside and tie its butt to the rear axle and hang on to its branches while his wife drove the team.  This held their load, making an effective brake.

Traveling through the forest, as they had been doing for weeks, while the day waned, they looked for a brookside on which they could pass the night with water handy.  Samson tethered, fed and watered their horses, and while Sarah and the children built a fire and made tea and biscuits, he was getting bait and catching fish in the stream.

“In a few minutes from the time I wet my hook a mess of trout would be dressed and sizzling, with a piece of salt pork, in the pan, or it was a bad day for fishing,” he writes.

After supper the wagon was partly unloaded, the feather bed laid upon the planks under the wagon roof and spread with blankets.  Then Samson sang songs and told stories or played upon the violin to amuse the family.  The violin invariably woke the birds in the tree-tops, and some, probably thrushes or warblers or white throated sparrows, began twittering.  Now and then one would express his view of the disturbance with a little phrase of song.  Often the player paused to hear these musical whispers “up in the gallery,” as he was wont to call it.

Often if the others were weary and depressed he would dance merrily around the fire, playing a lively tune, with Sambo glad to lend a helping foot and much noise to the program.  If mosquitos and flies were troublesome Samson built smudges, filling their camp with the smoky incense of dead leaves, in which often the flavor of pine and balsam was mingled.  By and by the violin was put away and all knelt by the fire while Sarah prayed aloud for protection through the night.  So it will be seen that they carried with them their own little theater, church and hotel.

Soon after darkness fell, Sarah and the children lay down for the night, while Samson stretched out with his blankets by the fire in good weather, the loaded musket and the dog Sambo lying beside him.  Often the howling of wolves in the distant forest kept them awake, and the dog muttering and barking for hours.

Samson woke the camp at daylight and a merry song was his reveille while he led the horses to their drink.

“Have a good night?” Sarah would ask.

“Perfect!” he was wont to answer.  “But when the smudges went out the mosquiters got to peckin’ my face.”

“Mine feels like a pincushion,” Sarah would often answer.  “Will you heat up a little water for us to wash with?”