Early years in Florida,Missouri(written in 1877)

I was born the 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. I suppose Florida had less than three hundred inhabitants. It had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues mere¹ lanes, with rail fences and cornfields on either side. Both the streets and the lanes were paved with the same material--tough black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry.
Most of the houses were of logs--all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab² benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adz. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs³ slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance⁴ was over. In winter there was always a refreshing⁵ breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas⁶ enough for all.
A slab bench is made of the outside cut of a saw-log, with the bark side down; it is supported on four sticks driven into auger⁷ holes at the ends; it has no back and no cushions. The church was twilighted with yellow tallow candles in tin sconces hung against the walls. Week days, the church was a schoolhouse.
There were two stores in the village. My uncle, John A. Quarles, was proprietor⁸ of one of them. It was a very small establishment, with a few rolls of "bit" calicoes on half a dozen shelves; a few barrels of salt mackerel, coffee, and New Orleans sugar behind the counter; stacks of brooms,

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