ABSTRACT
In my boyhood on the farm, so isolated, in a region of much forest and few conveniences for obtaining supplies, nothing was ever thrown away. A disused axe, a broken chain link, a rusty nail, an old thimble—every bit of odds and ends—was tossed into a corner in a disused shed; and, after a search there, my father was often heard to assert there was not in his possession any other thing that so often and so fully could be counted on to meet his urgent need as “the old iron box.”
