Thirty Years on the Frontier

The things my grandfather said and did to me when he returned from church does not concern the public. But when he had finished, I was fully convinced that I was all to blame, and that I owed Mr. Woods $150 for his demolished mule. Then followed long lectures from my mother and grandmother, and to add to my discomfiture was Mr. Woods' lamentations and his expressed regrets that it was not me, instead of his mule, that was blown up. I was the owner of an old musket with which I spent most of my time hunting rabbits, using small slugs of lead for shot, which I chopped up with a hatchet. Two weeks before the bombshell episode, I had found a musket-ball, and I concluded to try a man's load in the gun on my next rabbit; I poured in a full charge of powder, but when I came to ram the ball home, it would go only half way down the barrel.