The Liberal Use of Coal Oil and Sugar

The Smallwood family has a handsome farm just about where the two branches of Oak Creek pinch Doodlebug Island down to swimming properties, and old man Sedge and his wife Emily have an abundance of children who have known only the care, the tutoring, and the doctoring of their parents. Emily assumes responsibility for the first two, but the doctoring is purely the province of Sedge himself. Not that he’s ever taken training to diagnose illness nor dispense medicine. No, he’s had only the rough experience of farm life with its compilation of bumps, bruises, broken bones, contusions, gorings, maladies,…