He'd sell fifteen or twenty acres, every now and then, and they'd be high times till he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get some new clothes.
But when I was found on the door step, the land was all gone, and Hank was practising reg'lar, when not busy cussing out the fellers that had bought the land.

Fur some smart fellers had come along, and bought up all that swamp land and dreened it, and now it was worth seventy or eighty dollars an acre.

Hank, he figgered some one had cheated him.
Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn too, only they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fish frys than to dig ditches.

All of which I hearn Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n once when I was growing up, and they all says: "How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira!" And then she'd kind o' spunk up and say, thanks to glory, she'd kep' her pride.
Well, they was worse places to live in than that there little town, even if they wasn't no railroad within eight miles, and only three hundred soles in the hull copperation.

Which Hank's shop and our house set in the edge of the woods jest outside the copperation line, so's the city marshal didn't have no authority to arrest him after he crossed it.
They was one thing in that house I always admired when I was a kid.