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MICHIGAN FOOD & BEES BY A. D. P. VAN BUREN
Husking-bees with the pioneers were not of the old "down east" kind, where the boys and girls both attended them. The settlers and their sons only attended these. They were occasions of rare enjoyment besides being of value to the parties giving them. Sometimes the heap of corn would be divided into two parts or marked off into two parts, and parties chosen to husk against each other. This gave occasion to much strife and many a well contested race. Then again the time would be enlivened by some one singing a song. Those were the days of songs and song-singing. I am sorry that those songs have gone out of vogue. Another source of enjoyment at husking-bees was story-telling. This was a good occasion for cultivating the faculty of narration, and of imparting pleasure and information to others. As we had few books to read, we related over what we had read, and thus became books to each other.
THE FEVER AND AGUE. —"MICHIGAN RASH. "—MOSQUITOES—THE OLD
PIONEERS' FOES.
BY A. D. P. VAN BUREN.
"And on every day there, as sure as day would break, Their neighbor 'Ager' came that way, inviting them to shake. "
We could always tell when the ague was coming on, by the premonitory symptoms—the yawnings and stretchings; and if the person understood the complaint, he would look at his finger nails to see if they were turning blue. No disease foretold its coming by such unerring signs as the "fever'n ager. " The adept could detect its approach before it got within ten rods of him. At
first the yawns and stretchings stole upon you so naturally, that for a time you felt good in giving way to them; but they were soon followed by cold sensations, that crept over your system in streaks, faster and faster, and grew colder and colder as in successive undulations they coursed down your back, till you felt like "a harp of a thousand strings, " played upon by the icy fingers of old Hiems, who increased the cold chills until his victim shook like an aspen leaf, and his teeth chattered in his jaws.
Michigan
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