and paper; we had no slates. So I had to start in from scratch, from the primer class. It set me back quite a bit you know. Just makes you feel like a nobody that you didn't know nothing, you see, but as far as I know I was in Standard Five. I will never forget my first winter, 1910-11.1 just had cotton clothing that I came out from England in. I started out for school one morning in January after a heavy fall of snow and below zero. I had more than a mile to go to school through fields and woods. Now, at this time, Katie and Norman didn't want me to go to school after that heavy fall of snow but I was determined I'd go anyway. When I got to the back field, before entering the woods, the snow was so deep, up past my waist, that I couldn't walk through it. I had to lay on my stomach and crawl on my hands and knees, and when I got out of the woods in Simon Nicholson 's field about a hundred yards from school I found it difficult to walk. My shoes were full of snow and frozen stiff. It was late. I was late. I went into school. I was so cold that soon after taking my seat I began to cry. The teacher told two big boys, Whit Larabee and Walter Fraser , to take me up to the stove to thaw out my shoes and warm me. But my shoes were frozen so hard that they couldn't get them off. And it was the worst thing they could have done, putting me so close to the heat. For an hour or so I was in agony. When I returned home in the evening, nearly as cold, Katie realized that my underwear was too thin for that kind of weather. So she made clothing for me out of woollen blankets that were made on the hand looms. Oh, it was quite a shock, but I didn't get to go to school much. You see, school stopped in June, and then you had the summer vacation till latter part of August, I think. Well you had the haymaking, [then] you had to stay home for the harvesting, and then after the harvesting there was the ploughing... . And then the potato digging, and then after that came the pulling the turnips. They had about an acre of turnips. Well, I didn't get to go to school till sometime near the middle of November. And all the other children would be in school, you see. So then that set me back quite a bit, too. I didn't get back to school till November and we had a new teacher come in, and she wouldn't let me go into the grade that I graded into. She put me back to the grade that I graded out of. And I used to go 'round with the farmers, you know, and some of them would give me 25 cents, some would give me 50 cents, and I got a new grammar and a history and a geography. 106 BELFAST PEOPLE