From "History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties" - J. A. Caldwell, 1880, pages 167-171.

WILLIAMS, ACCOUNT OF PIONEER LIFE-WESTERN EMIGRATION - EARLY SETTLERS - THE LOG CABIN - ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF THE WILDERNESS.

John S. Williams, who edited the periodical entitled the American Pioneer, published at Cincinnati in 1843, wrote a series of articles on the knowledge and experience of pioneer life, which will afford the reader of the present day a vivid idea of the subject. In the spring of 1800 he came with his mother, sister, and brother from Beaufort, North Carolina, to what was then Jefferson county, in the Northwest Territory. We make the following liberal extracts from his accounts of their journey to the west and their settlement and experience in the wilder­ness

THE JOURNEY

"In April, 1800, we sailed from Beaufort for Alexandria, in company with seventy other emigrants, large and small, say twelve families. We had one storm and was once becalmed in Core sound, and had to wait about two weeks at Currituck inlet (now filled up) for a wind to take us to sea. From thence to Alexandria we had a fine run, especially up the Potomac bay. While cooped up in the vessel, a circumstance happened to me that I shall never forget, and was always of use to me. One of the first nights Of the voyage I lost my trousers, so that when it was time to dress in the morning, my indispensables were non est inventis. There were many of both sexes present, for the schooner had very little loading bat emigrants. The mortification, felt for half an hour at the accident, was never erased from my memory, and from that time to this I never un­dress without knowing precisely where my clothing is left. During the storm we were in, the majority on board were sea­sick, and we had rather a disagreeable time among say forty or fifty vomiting individuals. Nether that nor the rolling of the vessel affected me as it happened. This is mentioned as one of the disagreeabilities of emigration, that makes settling in the woods feel more comfortable by contrast,

"At Alexandria we remained several days before we got wag­ons to bring us out, here every thing; was weighed. My weight was just seventy-five pounds. We stopped near two weeks on what I think was called Goose creek, in Virginia, be­fore we. could be supplied with a wagon, to cross the mountains in place of the one we occupied, which belonged there,

"The mountain roads (it roads they could be called, for pack­horses were still on them) wore of the most dangerous and difficult character. I have heard an old mountain tavern-keeper say, that although the taverns wore less than ten miles apart in years after we came, he has known many immigrant families that stopped a night at every tavern on the mountains; I recollect but few of our night stands distinctly, say, Dinah Besor's, Goose creek, Old Crock's, near the south branch, Tomlinson's, Beesontown, and Simpkins' and Merritstown. Our company consisted of Joseph Dew, Levina Hall, and Jonas Small, with their families

"After a tedious journey we all arrived safe at Fredericktown, Washingtown county, Pa., where we stopped to await the ope­ning of the land office at Steubenville, Ohio. Here we found Morton Howard and family, who had come on the season, pre­vious. Here, also, the children had the whooping cough. Those whom we left at Alexandria, came to Redstone Old Fort, ten miles below Fredericktown, where they sojourned for the same purpose and although, as we thought, unfortunately detained, they were the first at their resting place. We regretted much to leave them, but considered, ourselves fortunate in being, the first to start, but like many circumstances of life where appearances are not realities, they wore fortunate in being left for a better and more speedy conveyance.

Jonas Small, Francis Macc, and several other families from Redstone, returned to Carolina, dissatisfied with the hills, vales and mud of the Northwest, little dreaming of the level and open prairies of this valley. Horton Howard and family started first from Frededericktown; Joseph Dew, Levina Hall and ourselves made another start in September, or early in October. We started in the afternoon and lay at Benjamin Townsend's, on Fishpot run; we lay also at the Blue Ball, near Washington; at Rice's, on the Buffalo; and at Warren,* on the Ohio. These are all the night stands I now recollect in fifty-five miles. We arrived safe at John Leaf's, in what is now called Concord set­tlement. From Warren, Joseph Dow and Mrs. Hall proceeded up Little Short creek, and stopped near where Mount Pleasant now is. In what is now called Concord settlement, four or five years previously, five or six persons had squatted and made small improvements. The Friends, chiefly from Carolina, had taken the land at a clear sweep. Mr. Leaf lived on a tract bought by Horton Howard, since owned by Samuel Potts, and subse­quently by Wm. Millhouse. Horton Howard had turned in on Mr. Leaf; and we turned in on both.

THE LOG CABIN

If any one has all idea of the appearance of the remnant of a town that has been nearly destroyed by fire, and the houseless inhabitants turned in upon those who were left, they can form some idea of the squatters' cabins that fall. It was a real harvest for them, however, for they received the rhino for the privileges granted, and work done, as well in aid of the emigrants in get­ting cabins up as for their improvements. This settlement is in Belmont county, on Glenn's run, about six miles northwest of Wheeling, and as much northeast of St. Clairesville.

"Emigrants poured in from different posts, cabins were put up in every direction, and women, children, and goods tumbled into them. The tide of emigration flowed like water through a branch in a mill-dam. Everything was bustle and confusion and all at work that could work. In the midst of all this, the mumps, and perhaps one or two other diseases, prevailed and gave us a seasoning. Our cabin had been raised, covered, part of the cracks chinked, and part of the floor laid when we moved in, on Christmas day. There had not been a stick cut except in building the cabin. We had intended an inside chimney, for we thought the chimney ought to be in the house. We had a log put across the whole width of the cabin for a mantel, but when the floor was in we found it so low as not to answer, and removed it, Here was a great change for my mother and sister, as well as the rest, but particularly my mother. She was raised in the most. delicate manner in and near London, and lived most of the time in affluence, and always comfortable. She was now in the wilderness, surrounded by wild beasts a cabin with about a half a floor, no door, no ceiling overhead, not even a tol­erable sign for a fireplace, the light of day and the chilling winds of night passing between every two logs in the building. The cabin so high from the ground that a bear, wolf, panther, or any animal less in size than a cow, Could enter without even a squeeze. Such was our situation on Thursday and Thursday night, December 25th, 1899, and which was bettered but by very slow degrees. We got the rest of the floor laid in a few days, the chinking of the cracks went on slowly, but the daubing could not proceed till the weather was more suitable, which happened in a few days; door-ways were sawed out and steps made of the logs, and the back of the chimney was raised up to the mantel, but the funnel of sticks and clay was delayed until spring." * *

"In building our cabin it was set to front the north and south, my brother using my father’s pocket compass on the occasion. We had no idea of living in a house that did not stand square with the earth itself: This argued our ignorance of the com­forts and conveniences of a pioneer life. The position of the house, end to the hill, necessarily elevated the lower end, and the determination to have both a north and south door added much to the airyness of the domicile, particularly after the green ash puncheons had shrunk so as to have cracks in the floor and doors from one to two inches wide. At both the doors we had high, unsteady, and sometimes icy steps, made by piling up the logs cut out of the wall. We had, as the reader will see, a win­dow, if it could he called a window, when, perhaps, it was the largest spot in the top, bottom, or sides of the cabin at which the wind could not enter, It was by sawing out a log, placing sticks across, and then, by pasting an old newspaper over the holes, and applying some hog's lard, we had a kind of glazing which shed a most beautiful_ and mellow light across the cabin when the sun shone upon it. All other light entered at the doors, cracks, and chimney.

"Our cabin was twenty-four by eighteen, The west end was occupied by two beds, the centre of each side by a door, and hero our symmetry had to stop, for on the side opposite the win­dow, made of clapboards, supported by pins driven into the logs, were our shelves. Upon these shelves my sister displayed, in ample order, a host of pewter plates, basins, and dishes, and spoons, scoured and bright. It was none of your new-fangled pewter made of lead, but the best of London pewter, which our father himself bought of Townsend, the manufacturer. These were the plates upon which you could hold your meat so as to cat it without slipping and without dulling your knife. But, alas the days of pewter plates and sharp dinner knives have passed away never to return. To return to our internal ar­rangements, A ladder of five rounds occupied the corner near the window, By this, when we got a floor above, we could as­cend. Our chimney occupied most of the cast end; pots and kettles opposite the window under the shelves, a gun on hooks over, the north door, four split-bottom chairs, three three-legged stools, and a small eight by ten looking-glass sloped from the wall over a large towel and comb-case. These, with a clumsy shovel and a pair of` tongs, made in Frederick, with one shank straight, as the best manufacturer of pinches and blood-blisters, completed our furniture, except a spinning-wheel and such things as were necessary to work with. It was absolutely necessary to have three-legged stools, as four legs of anything could not all touch the floor at the same time.

"The completion of our cabin went on slowly. The season was inclement; we were weak-handed and weak-pocketed - in fact, laborers were not to be had. We got one chimney up breast high as soon as we could, and got our cabin daubed as high as the joists outside. It never was daubed on the inside, for my sister, who was, very nice, could not consent to 'live right next to the mud,' My impression now is that the window was not constructed till spring, for until the sticks and clay were put on the chimney, we could possibly have no need of a window; for the flood of light which always poured into the cabin from the fireplace would have extinguished our window, and rendered it as useless as the moon at noonday. We got a floor laid overhead as soon as possible, perhaps in a month; but when it was laid, the reader can readily conceive of its imperviousness to wind or weather, when we mention that it was laid of loose clapboards split from a red oak. That tree grew in the night, and so twisting that each board laid on two diagonally opposite corners, and a cat might have shook every board on our ceiling.

"It may be well to inform the unlearned reader that clap­boards are such lumber as pioneers split with a frow, and re­semble barrel stares before they are shaved, but are split longer, wider, and thinner; of such our roof and ceiling were composed.. Puncheons were planks made by splitting logs to about two and a half or three inches in thickness, and hewing them on one or both sides with the broad-axe. Of such our floor, doors, tables, and stools were manufactured. The eave-bearers are those end logs which project over to receive the butting poles, against which the lower tier of the clapboards rest in forming the roof. The trapping is the roof timbers, composing the gable end and the ribs, being those logs upon which the clapboards lie. The trap logs are those of unequal length above the eave bearers, which form the gable ends, and upon which the ribs rest. The weight poles are those small logs laid on the roof, which weigh down the course of clapboards on which they lie, and against which the next course above is placed. The knees are pieces of heart timber placed above the butting poles, suc­cessively, to prevent the weight poles from rolling off."

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS.

"It was evidently a mistake to put our chimney at the lower end of the house, for as soon as we put the funnel on in the spring, we found that the back of our breastwork settled, and was likely to topple our chimney down. This we might have remedied by a kind of frame work, had we thought of it, and had the tools to make it with. So scarce were our tools that our first pair of bar posts were mortised by pecking them on each side with a common axe, and then blowing coals in the holes we burned them through so as to admit of the bars. But I do not think the framework to support the chimney was thought of, To prop it with a pole first suggested itself, at the foot of which was a large stake. These remained an incum­brance in the yard for years.

"There never was any unmixed good or unmixed evil fell to the lot of men in this probationary state. So, our fireplace being at the east end, was much more like our parlor fireplace in Carolina; and besides this, while the chimney was only breast high, we should have been bacon before candlemas had the chimney been in any other position; but situated as it was, and the prevailing winds that blew inside the house as well as outside being from west to east, most of the smoke was driven off, except occasionally an eddy which would bring smoke and flame into our faces. One change of wind for a few days made our cabin almost uninhabitable. Here is presented an advantage of an open house. Let the wind be which way it would, the smoke and ashes could get out without opening doors and win­dows, and all that sort of trouble, known at the present day, whenever a chimney seems to draw best at the wrong end; be­sides this, a little breeze would not, as now, give us colds."

"The monotony of the time for several of the first years was broken and enlivened by the howl of wild beasts. The wolves howling around us seemed to moan their inability to drive us from their long and undisputed domain, The bears, panthers, and deer seemingly got miffed at our approach. or the partiality of the hunters, and but seldom troubled us. We did not hunt for them. The wildcat, raccoon, possum, hornet, yellow jacket, rattlesnake, copperhead, nettle and a host of small things which seemed in part to balance the amount of pioneer happiness, hold on to their rights until driven out gradually by the united efforts of the pioneers, who like a band of brothers mutually aided each other in the great work. These things, as well as getting their bread, kept them too busy for law-suits, quarrels, crimes, and speculations, and made them happy."

"When spring was fully come, and our little patch of corn, three acres, put in among the beech roots, which at every stop contended with the shovel plough for the right of soil, and held it too, we enlarged our stock of conveniences. As soon as bark would run (peel off we could make ropes and bark boxes. These we stood in great need of, as such things as bureaus, stands, wardrobes, or oven barrels, were not  to be had. The manner of making ropes of linn bark, was to cut the bark in strips of convenient length, and water-rot it in the same man­ner as rotting flax or hemp. When this was done, the inside bark would peel off and split up so fine as to make a pretty con­siderably rough and good-for-but-little kind of a rope. Of this, however, we were very glad, and let no ship owner with his grass ropes laugh at us. We made two kinds of boxes for fur­niture. One kind was of hickory bark with the outside shaved off. This we would takeoff all round the tree, the size of which would determine the calibre of our box. Into one end we would place a flat piece of barn or puncheon cut round to fit in the bark, which stood on end the same as when on the tree. There was little need of hooping as the strength of the bark would keep that all right enough. Its shrinkage would make the top unsightly in a parlor now-a-days, but then they were considered quite an addition to the furniture. A much finer article was made of slippery-elm bark, shaved smooth and with the inside out, bent round and sewed together where the ends of the hoop or main bark lapped over. The length of the bark was around the box and inside out. A bottom was made of a piece of the same bark dried flat, and a lid like that of a common band-box, made in the same way. This was the finest furniture in a lady's dressing room, and then, as now, with the finest fur­niture, the lapped or sewed side was turned to the wall and the prettiest part to the spectator. They were usually made oval. and while the bark was green were easily ornamented with drawings of birds, trees, &c., agreeably to the test and skill of the fair manufacturer. As we belonged to the society of Friends it may be fairly presumed that our bandboxes were not thus ornamented.

"Many a sly glance would be cast at the now band-boxes, and it is hoped that no modern belle will laugh because a pioneer Miss might be proud of her new bark box; for it is just as easy to be proud of such things, and as much sin too, as to be proud of a new dressing-table, glass, &c. On the other hand, it is quite as easy to be happy, and easier to be properly thankful for the small favors in the woods, than it is now for a pampered Miss to be happy with, or thankful for, all the finery of her toil­ette. The amount of happiness received, or acknowledged to the Giver, is by no means regulated by the appearance or cost of the articles.

"To the above store of bark ropes and bark boxes, must be added a few gums, before the farmer considered himself comfort­ably fixed. It may be well to inform the unlearned reader that gums are hollow trees cut off with puncheons pinned on, or fitted in one end, to answer in the place of barrels,

"The privations of a pioneer life contract the wants of man almost to total extinction, and allow him means of charity and benevolence. Sufferings enoble his feelings, and the frequent necessity for united efforts at house-raisings, log-rollings, corn­huskings, &c., produced in him habitual charity, almost unknown in these days of luxury, among the many tyrannical wants of artificial, tastes and vitiated appetites. We have now but little time left to think of good, and still less to practice it. Our sys­tem of action now seems to be a general scramble for the spoils. From the reverend divine, who looks upon the fatness of his salary as being the good of his profession, down through all the grades of speculators, swindlers, and jockeys, whose maxim is, 'Their eyes are their market,' the leading principles are near akin if not the very same. Most, if not all of these, if it were not for public opinion, would cheat their dim sighted mothers out of their good spectacles by giving them empty frames in trading, and then brag of their skill in cheating. There are many honor­able exceptions to the too prevalent system of grabbing. That system reminds us of the scramble that went on for years among the squirrels, raccoons, and groundhogs for our corn crops; and frequently they left us little except the husks, and our path around the field made in our own defense.

"We settled on beech land which took much labor to clear. We could do no other way than clear out the smaller stuff and burn the brush, &c., around the beeches which, in spite of all the girdling and burning we could do to them, would leaf out the first year, and often a little the second. The land, however, was very rich, and would bring better corn than might be expected. We had to tend it principally with the hoe, that is, to chop down the nettles, the water-weed, and the touch-me not. Grass, care­less, lambs-quarter, and Spanish needles were reserved to poster the better prepared farmer. We cleared a small turnip patch, which we got in about the 10th of August, We sowed in timo­thy seed, which took well, and next year we had a little hay be­sides. The tops and blades of the corn were also carefully saved for our horse, cow, and the sheep. The turnips were sweet and good, and in the fall we took care to gather walnuts and hickory nuts, which were very abundant. These, with the turnips, which we scraped, supplied the place of fruit, I have always been partial to scraped turnips, and could now beat any three dandies at scraping them. Johnny cake, also, when we bad meal to make it of, helped to make up our evening's, repast, The Sunday morning biscuit bad all evaporated, but the loss was partially supplied by the nuts and turnips. Our regular supper was mush and milk, and by the time we had shelled our Corn, stemmed to­bacco, and plaited straw to make hats &c., &c., the mush and milk had seemingly decamped from the neighborhood of our ribs. To relieve this difficulty, my brother and I would bake a thin Johnny-cake, part of which we would eat, and leave the rest till morning. At daylight we would eat the balance as we walked from the house to work.

'The methods of eating mush and milk were various, some would sit around the pot and every one take there from for him­self. Some would set a table and each have his tin cup of milk and with a pewter spoon take just as much mush from the dish or the pot, if it was on the table, as he thought would fill his mouth or throat, then lowering it into the milk, would take some to wash it down. This method kept the milk cool, and by frequent repetitions the pioneer could contract a faculty of cor­rectly estimating the proper amount of each. Others would mix mush and milk together. Many an urchin, who was wont to hit his little brother or sister with a spoon, in a quarrel around the mush put oil the floor, in after life learned to quarrel on the floor of congress, or to exchange shots on what is sometimes called the field of honor; so quick, if not magical, has been the transition of this country.

"'To got grinding done was often a great difficulty, by reason of the scarcity of mills, the freezes in winter, and droughts in summer. We had often to manufacture meal (when we had corn) in any way we could get the corn to pieces. We soaked and pounded it, we shaved it, we planed it, and, at a proper season grated it. When one of our neighbors got a hand mill, it was thought quite an acquisition to the neighborhood. No need thou of steam doctors, for we could take hand-mill sweats of our own when we pleased; nor of homoeopathists, for our stomachs needed larger doses; nor of the professional physician, for white walnut bark boiled, and the decoction stewed down, was the fashionable medicine used by those unfashionable ones, who chanced to have a qualm. As for dyspepsia and the like, saw mills might as well be suspected of having it. In after years, when in time of freez­ing or drought, we could get grinding by waiting for our turn no more than one day and a night at a horse mill, we thought ourselves happy.

"To save meal we often made pumpkin bread, in which, when meal was scarce, the pumpkin would so predominate as to render it almost impossible to tell our bread from that article, either by taste, looks, or the amount of nutriment it contained. To rise from the table with a good appetite is said to be healthy, and with some is said to be fashionable. What then does it signify to he hungry for a mouth at a time, when it is not only healthy but fashionable. Besides all this, the sight of a bag of meal, when it was scarce, made the family feel more glad and thankful to heaven then, than a whole boat load would at the present time.

"Salt was five dollars per bushel, and we used none in our corn broad, which we soon liked as well without it. Often has sweat ran into my mouth, which tasted as fresh and flat as distilled water. What meat we  had at first was  fresh, and but little of that; for had we been hunters, we had no time to prac­tice it.

"We had no candles, and cared but little about them, except for summer use. In Carolina we had the real fat light-wood, -not merely pine knots, but_ the fat straight pine. This, from the brilliancy of our parlor of winter evenings, might be sup­posed to put not only candles, lamps, camphene, Greenough's chemical oil, but even gas itself to the blush. In the West we had not this, but my business was to ramble the woods every evening for seasoned sticks or the bark of the shelly hickory, for light. 'Tis true that our light was not as good as even candles, but we got along without fretting, for we depended more upon the goodness of our of eyes than we did upon the brilliancy of the light.

"One of my employments of winter evenings, after we raised Hax, was the spinning of rope yarn, from the coarsest swingling tow, to make bed cords for sale. Swingling tow is a corrup­tion of singling tow, as swingle tree is of single tree. The man­ner of spinning rope yarn was by means of a drum, which turned on a horizontal shaft driven into a hole in one of the cabin logs near the fire. The yarn was hitched to a nail on one side of the circumference next to me. By taking an oblique direction and keeping up a regular jerking or pulling of the thread, the drum was kept in constant motion, and thus the twisting and pulling out went on regularly and simulta­neously until the length of the walk was taken up. Then, by winding the yarn first on my fore-arm, and from that on the drum, I was ready to spin another thread.

"The unlearned reader might enquire what we did with the finer kinds of tow. It is well enough to apprise him that next to rope yarn in fineness, was filling for trowsers and aprons; next finer, warp for the same and filling for shirts and frocks; next finer of tow thread, warp for shirts and frocks, unless some of the higher grades of society would use flax thread. Lined shirts, especially seven hundred, was counted the very top of the pot, and he who wore an eight hundred linen shirt was coutted a dandy, He was not called a dandy, for the word was unknown, as well as the refined animal which bears that name. Pioneers found it to their advantage to wear tow linen and eat skim milk, and sell their flax, linen and butter.

"Frocks were a short kind of shirt worn over the trowsers. We saved out shirts by pulling them off in warm weather and wearing nothing in day time but our hats, made of straw, our frocks, and our trowsers. It will be thus perceived that these things took place before the days of suspenders, when every one's trowsers lacked about two inches of reaching up to where the waistcoat reached down. It was counted, no extraordinary sight and no matter of merriment to see the shirt work out over all the waistband two or three inches, and hang in a grace­ful festoon around the waist. Suspenders soon became a part of the clothing, and was a real improvement in dress.

"The girls had forms without bustles, and rosy cheeks with­out paint. Those who are thin, lean and colorless from being slaves to idleness or fashion, are, to some extent, excusable for endeavoring to be artificially what the pioneer girls were nat­urally; who, had they needed lacing, might have used tow strings, and if bran wore used for bustles, might have curtailed their suppers. Those circumstances which frequently occa­sioned the bran to be eaten after the flour was gone, laced tight enough without silk cord or bone-sets, and prevented that state of things which sometimes makes it necessary to eat both flour and bran together as a medicine, and requires bran or straw outside to make the shape respectable.

        "Not only about the farm, but also to meeting, the younger part of the families, and even men went barefoot in summer. The young women carried their shoes and stockings, it they had them, in their hands until they got in sight of the meeting house, where, sitting on a log, they shod themselves for meeting; and at the same place, after meeting, they unshod themselves for a walk home, perhaps one or two miles. Whether shoes, stock­ings, or oven bonnets were to be bad or not, meeting must be attended. Let those who cannot attend church without a new bonnet, who cannot go two or three squares because it is so cold or so rainy, or so sunny, not laugh at the veal of those pioneers for religion.

"Turnips, walnuts and hickory nuts supplied the place of fruit till peaches were raised. In five or six years millions of peaches rotted on the ground. Previous to our raising apples, we sometimes went to Martins Ferry on the Ohio to pick peaches for the owner, who had them distilled. We got a bushel of

apples for each day's work in picking peaches. These were kept for particular eating, as if they had contained seeds of gold. Their extreme scarcity made them seem valuable, and stand next to the short biscuit that were so valued in times gone by. Paw-paws wore eaten in their season. When we got an abundance of apples they seemed to lose their flavor and relish.

"Pasturage was abundant in summer, being composed mostly of nettles waist high, which made us fine greens, and thus served for both the cow and her owner; and yet, like every thing else on earth, seemed to balance the account by stinging us at every turn. Even the good pasturage of this new country considered as pasture, had its balancing properties; for the same rich soil from which sprang nettles and pasture in such abundance, brought forth also the ramps or wild garlic, which, springing first, were devoured by the cows. Cows could not be confined, for want of fences, nor dared we neglect milking, lest they might go dry, and for two or three weeks cows were milked in pails and the milk thrown out and given to the hogs. We never milked on the ground, as it seemed a pity, and some said it was bad luck. We never heard of milk sickness, or we might have been less disposed to fret at the ramps, and might have been thankful for being blessed with a disadvantage less frightful.

"Our axe-handles were straight and egged-shaped. Whether the oval form and the crooked bulbous ends of the present day is an improvement or not is immaterial here to enquire; but had we used the present form. then, I should at times have been fixed to the axe. The hand that holds this pen, had before it felt the cold of twelve winters, been so benumbed by chop­ping in the cold as to have the fingers set to the handle, making it necessary to slip them off at the end, which could not have boon done were they of the present shape. After the fingers were off, a little rubbing and stretching from the other hand would restore them, but would not dry up the blood nor heal the chaps with which they were covered. These and kin­dred things are well calculated to make one, by contrast. appre­ciate the blessings of leisure and case, until they become too com­mon, when we lose our relish of them and the gratitude we ought to feel for time even to think."