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ye>SbA BUCKEYE BOYHOODBY THE SAME AUTHOR

A History of the United States.

Beginnings of Literary Culture in
the Ohio Valley.

Let Him First Be a Man. Essays.

A Dream of Empire, or The House of
Blennerhassett. A novel.

Tom Tad. A novel of boy-life. Illustrated.

Footprints of the Pioneers. Illustrated.

Tales from Ohio History. Illustrated.

June on the Miami, and Other Poems.

The Teacher's Dream, and Other
Poems. Illustrated.

Saga of the Oak, and Other Poems.
With portrait.

Cincinnati : A Civic Ode.

Floridian Sonnets. With portrait.BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

BY

WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE

CINCINNATI

THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY
1911COPYRIGHT

STEWART & K1DD CO.

1911

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England

All Bights Reserved

THE QUINN A BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.■ail.i i

V55b

i

This entertaining story, which relates mainly to
v> life on a farm in Southern Ohio during a period

cs

^ beginning with the year 1836 and ending in 1858,
^ invests familiar scenes and experiences with an
^ idyllic charm, and enriches American literature
with a classic of historical value.—That the story
is a veiled autobiography, the author discloses in
the opening chapter: "As for the particular
Buckeye Boy whose experiences are here inter-
i woven with memories and observations of a more
' general character, he was native to the wild-
woods and a foster-child of the unfenced valleys
v> and hills."—Under such chapter-headings as
*L" Seventy Years Ago," " The Moving," " The
p Big Woods," " Being a Farmer Boy," " Down
to Cincinnati," " Going to School," " Books and
Reading," " Religion," and " Politics," we follow
^ a personal narrative of absorbing interest, replete
" £ with humor and pathos, mirth and satire, wisdom
and philosophy.

j

•o>

c^

576765CONTENTS

CHAPTER	PAGE

I.	Seventy Yeaes Ago ...	3

II.	The Moving . . . . . .	8

III.	Taking a Fresh Stabt . . .	16

IV.	The Big Woods.....31

V.	Going to School ... . . .44

VI.	Wagon-Road and Railway ...	67

VII.	Down to Cincinnati ....	73

Vm.	Being a Farmer-Boy . . . .	89

IX.	Country Schoolmasters . . .	101

X.	A Scion of Nobility ....	118

XI.	Out-of-door and In-door Amuse-
ments .......124

XII.	Books and Reading ....	135

XIII.	Religious Experience ....	150

XIV.	Politics ......	174A BUCKEYE BOYHOODA BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

i

SEVENTY YEARS AGO

These reminiscences of the observation and
experience of a country boy in one of the southern
counties of Ohio, relate mainly to the period of
the eighteen-forties, a decade during which vast
areas of land in the Middle West were as yet
unreclaimed from the wilderness. In many sec-
tions the primeval forest maintained stubborn
supremacy upon a thousand half-cleared farms,
standing with mute and frowning defiance against
the encroachment of agriculture. Though an
incessant

" clamor of the axes ran
Along the great woods,"

the ruthless lumberman had but fairly begun his
devastating warfare. Nature, jealous of her an-
cient savage reign, spurned conquest, abhorred
" improvement," and did all she could to obstruct
and frustrate the puny efforts of human hands to

34	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

subdue her proud estate to the uses of civili-
zation.

The advent of agricultural machinery, the age
of man's mastery over, or servitude to, steam
and electricity, had not arrived. The brawn of the
" labor-lords," and the harnessed muscle of horse
and ox, directly applied, were almost the only
physical forces by which the work of clearing the
fields and tilling the soil was accomplished. The
process of taming the reluctant wild, of fencing
arable acres, and of making thoroughfares, de-
manded unremitting energy and vigilance from
whoever would hope to secure a maintenance and
establish tolerable relations of comfort and con-
venience with the surroundings of his independent
little world, a raw farm shadowed by forest trees,
invaded by rank native weeds, undermined by
the grubworm and the mole, and pillaged by squir-
rels, crows, and marauding hordes of pigeons and
blackbirds.

Many pages of this true story of country life
in southern Ohio deal with those vaunted Old
Times, traditionally known as " good," over
which still lingered the parting twilight of the
colonial, or, at least, the revolutionary day of
unremitting toil; that severe day of apprentice-
ship to trades; day of '' bound boys " and of over-
taxed housewives; day when honest and frugalSEVENTY YEARS AGrO	5

poverty was liable to be sold out of its wagon and
plow, its kitchen utensils, table and bed, by the
sheriff, for the sin of unavoidable debt; day of
rising with the far-away English lark; day when
the strenuous and inexorable mandates of " Poor
Eichard's Almanac " were virtuously and rigor-
ously enforced and obeyed as if they were holy
Scripture, and when even young children learned
by heart, with the purpose of making them rules
of conduct, such prudential maxims as: " God
helps them who help themselves " The sleep-
ing fox catches no poultry " Early to bed and
early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and
wise " He that by the plow would thrive, him-
self must either hold or drive and " Rather
go to bed supperless, than to rise in debt."

Boys and girls who were thus brought up,
under a regime entailed by customs surviving
from pioneer days, did not regard their lot as a
hard one, or the new Western country in which
they dwelt as being a wild region of comparatively
recent settlement, nor did they at all realize that
the rigorous life they were living bordered closely
on the simplest and most primitive. They were
not aware that they were daily

" Strengthened and braced, by breathing in content
The keen, the wholesome, air of poverty,
And drinking from the well of homely life."6	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

Contented they were, and self-reliant; they felt
no sense of disadvantage; they were proud and
glad of their heritage of liberty and opportunity.
Among them was no repining, no flinching from
each one's fair share of exposure and task, depri-
vation and sacrifice. Luxury was not coveted, but
the essentials to a comfortable, independent sub-
sistence gained by labor and frugality were
secured, and the sheer joy of exertion and de-
light in the untrammeled freedom of periods of
productive toil, chiefly spent out of doors, ren-
dered their condition happy.

As for the particular Buckeye Boy whose ex-
periences are here interwoven with memories and
observations of a more general character, he was
native to the wildwoods and a foster-child of
the unfenced valleys and hills. Though his in-
fancy was not rocked in the proverbial, idyllic
sugar-trough, " Tip "—for so the boy was fa-
miliarly called, being a namesake of the hero of
Tippecanoe—was born within the walls of a
veritable log-house, the timbers of which his
father, assisted by accommodating neighbors,
had hewn from straight trees felled in the near
forest, and had raised to their place in the rude
structure with hand-spike and steadying shoulder.

Dimly pictured in the light of fading recollec-
tion is that rustic dwelling, a structure so simple,SEVENTY YEAES AGO	7

so sylvan, and so directly appropriated from na-
ture, that it might well have been described in the
phrase of Emerson, as " a quotation from the
forest." Through its narrow windows could be
seen on every side the surrounding woods mys-
teriously beautiful and solemn. A mile or two
eastward of the cleared and cultivated acres near
the dwelling, the prolific land, thickly overgrown
with towering trees and luxuriant undershrubs,
sloped steeply down to a pleasant river, the Little
Miami, murmuring sleepily along its flat shore
whereon mud-turtles .sunned themselves in hot
weather, and where the patient sand-hill crane
used to stand motionless on his long stilt-legs,
watching for unwary minnows swimming in the
pebbly shallows.

Within a few paces of the dooryard there lay
an open field of grass billowing to the summer
breeze like a miniature green sea. To wade out
into this fragrant deep of verdure far enough to
reach a tempting shoal where grew on slender
stalks a prize of pendulous meadow lilies of deep
orange color with dark purple spots inside, was
an adventure no less daring than delightful to the
five-year-old lad who received his first impression
of life and nature in and near the sequestered
cottage which was the home of his early childhood.n

THE MOVING

Before Tip was old enough to take particular
notice of his environment, the family removed to
another residence situated on a newly-purchased
tract lying a few miles farther west.

On a chill and gusty November day, in which
brief spells of sunshine alternated with cloudy
hours spitting moist snow, the moving took place.
Two or three heavy wagons were sufficient to
convey the farm implements and household goods
to the new premises. One of these vehicles af-
forded cramped space on top of its other lading
for Tip's mother, his two sisters, and himself, to
snuggle between a rolled-up feather-bed and a
bundle of blankets and pillows. Eoom was made,
also, for the shivering small body of a pet dog
named Coley, a pampered aristocrat who wore an
elegant morocco collar fastened by means of a
tiny brass padlock. The inconvenient passenger-
coach was provided with a canvas cover drawn
over a set of hickory wagon-bows. Notwithstand-
ing the disagreeable weather and the discomfort
attendant upon crowding five persons within the

8THE MOVING

9

narrow confines afforded them in the front end of
a jolting vehicle already overloaded, the children
were delighted with the novel excursion, though
Tip secretly suspected that his mother, for some
cause unimaginable to him, was not in high spirits.
Could it be possible that he saw a tear trickle
down her cheek, as she sat beside his father,;
wrapped in a warm shawl and holding her little
daughter Cynthia closely to her breast?

The small boy, voyaging he knew not whither
or why, looked out through the arch formed by the
white canopy which shut from his view all the
landscape except that lying directly in front, and
he could see, over the heads of the horses, a level
stretch of unfenced, narrow road, bare trees on
either side, and ragged clouds scudding across
the distant sky. When tired of thus gazing for-
ward, he would lean over and peep down between
the edge of the wagon-bed and the flapping cover,
and watch the crisp brown leaves as they danced
and rustled over the slightly frozen ground, along
the roadside, or would listen to the thud of the
horses' hoofs, the dull jingling of the trace-chains,
and the sound of the wheels that, crunching along
in deeply-worn ruts, through thin ice under which
no water remained, made a pleasant kind of win-
try music. The antics of the dry leaves and the
shrilly tune of the tires shivering the ice-glaze10	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

impressed his memory more lastingly than did
anything else observed by him during that slow
but not very long journey.

According to a prearranged plan, the movers
did not drive directly to the empty domicile
which was to be their future home, but the wagons
were halted near the house of Tip's grandmother,
where the party was to stop over night. The
grandmother was a widow who, with three
grown-up sons and two daughters, dwelt in a
spacious, typical log-mansion of the early period
when Ohio was not yet quite out of the backwoods.

The old homestead was a commodious and com-
fortable structure of hewn logs, consisting of two
main sections each a story and a half high, sepa-
rated and also united by a paved area or open
rectangle sheltered from sun and rain by a clap-
board roof. At either end of the '' double cabin ''
rose a huge stone chimney which projected on the
outside of the house. Dwelling places of a similar
character are yet to be seen in some of the South-
ern States. The ground floor of the eastern
wing of the house was put to many uses, serving
as kitchen, dining-room, general workshop, and
dormitory, while the western lower room was re-
served for less promiscuous purposes, being a
kind of parlor and a sanctuary for Sunday retire-
ment, and for the reception of company dressed inTHE MOVING

11

Sunday " go-to-meeting " clothes, though occa-
sionally one might venture into this ever neat and
tidy room even on a week-day, to read a proper
book or to write an important letter.

The sleeping quarters on the second floor were
close and dusky, and the guest who sought a couch
in one of these had to be careful, for he ran the
risk of knocking his crown against the low rafters.
The soft rain on the near roof overhead pattered
gently as he settled himself to slumber, and if
the shower was violent, he might expect that some
insinuating drops would slip between the clap-
boards and fall upon his pillow or his face.

The room into which Tip was ushered, in com-
pany with his father, mother, brother, sisters,
and the snappish but consequential pet, Coley,
was a cheerful and attractive apartment when seen
in the warm welcoming light which radiated from
the inner hearth. The great fireplace made brave
display of its iron crane, its brass andirons under
the blazing forestick, and its smoldering back-
log, a foot or more in thickness and big enough to
last all night and half the next day. Above the
chimney-piece, resting upon wooden brackets, lay
a long rifle, and on the opposite wall, suspended
by wooden pegs, were hung shot-pouches and
powder-horns in ornamental array.

In one corner of the room stood a hand-loom,12	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

with a roll of linsey-woolsey wound upon its cloth-
beam. This weaving machine was something new
to the boy, and he was curious to find out how it
worked, and what was the purpose of the heddles,
the reed, the batten, and the shuttle. In the due
course of time, but not on that busy evening, his
grandmother, who was very amiable, notwith-
standing the ominous frown with which she some-
times regarded him through her spectacles, ex-
plained and illustrated not only the mysteries of
the loom, but also the mechanism and operation of
spinning-wheels, great and small, for wool and
for flax, and how to handle the scutching-maehine
and the hetchel, and the teasing-cards, and the
distaff; and sometimes she allowed him to turn
the yarn-reel, an ingenious contrivance which, as
often as it measured off enough yards to make a
skein, announced the fact by the sharp click of a
spring hidden amidst its inner works.

It was in this same pioneer log-house that Tip
first saw and investigated that interesting com-
bination of utilities, a cobbler's bench, with its
easy leathern seat, its outfit of hammer and last,
shoe-knife and sewing-awl, lap-stone, shoe-pegs,
shoe-thread and shoemaker's wax.

On the south side of the house there was a porch,
upon which were a long bench and several stools
for the accommodation of those who in rainyTHE MOVING

13

weather or at the " nooning " hour chose to sit
there, to rest, chat, or smoke a pipe; or to seek the
toilet accommodations afforded by the tin wash-
basin, the towels, and the hair-dressing articles of
bone or of wood, deposited in the pasteboard
comb-case. Under the sheltering roof, on hooks
and nails driven into the wall, were to be seen
scythe and sickle, hoe and rake, quail-nets and
fishing-poles, handspikes, axes, and husking-pegs.
The veranda and the gable end of the house were
overgrown thickly with clinging vines of the
trumpet-creeper.

A few steps from the porch brought one to the
well-curb, near which slanted the uncouth sweep
with its dangling rope of grape-vine, to the lower
end of which was suspended the " iron-bound
bucket," celebrated in song.

Not far from the well stood the milk-house,
always cool within, and always attractive on ac-
count of numerous pans of milk, pots of cream,
and crocks of golden butter, ranged carefully upon
the smooth and level earthen floor. In another
outhouse a cheese-press was kept ready for service
in proper season, for every accomplished house-
wife had to establish and sustain a proud reputa-
tion for skill in the manipulation of curds and
rennet.

No attempt shall here be made to describe all14	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

the appurtenances of the old house, or to enumer-
ate the processes of domestic manufacture in
vogue in country places at the period when Tip
explored the premises of the log-mansion where
he slept on that memorable night in November,
1842. Later he had ample opportunity to become
familiar with every nook and cranny of the old
house and with all its interior and exterior be-
longings.

One of the domestic objects to attract his child-
ish attention was an ancient Dutch clock, an un-
doubted Hollander, which held a dignified station
in the parlor, ticking most soberly and with a
moral precision which made no allowance for
human shortcomings, and only needed to be wound
up once in eight days. It displayed no fewer than
four index hands, pointing out the days, the hours,
the minutes, and the seconds. On its broad dial-
plate were shown, besides the twelve numerals
usually seen on the face of a clock, various as-
tronomical signs, and a device representing the
moon in different phases. This impressive time-
piece, owing to the extraordinary length of the
cords to which its ponderous weights were at-
tached, was called, somewhat disrespectfully, as
Tip thought, Old Long-String. For all that, Old
Long-String regulated the habits of the household,
and when he struck the hour, you could hear hisTHE MOVING

15

clear bell ringing from one end of the log-mansion
to the other, " upstairs, and downstairs, and in
my lady's chamber."

Other articles in the parlor, that especially took
Tip's eye, were of a decorative character. On
the wall hung a couple of wood-cuts or engravings
of some kind, printed in color. These garish
works of art held his gaze by the hour, and
haunted his imagination in after years. The pic-
tures were about eight by ten inches in size and
had frames with protecting glass. One repre-
sentedi Daniel O'Connell, the Irish patriot, robed
in a long cloak and looking very heroic. The
other, purporting to be the portrait of " Isabel,"
revealed the charms of a very red-lipped young
lady wearing a spangled bodice and a jaunty hat
over which flaunted a profusion of ostrich feathers
and under which clustered a redundance of golden
curls.ni

TAKING A FRESH START

Aftek sleeping soundly all night upon a pallet
improvised for Mm on the floor, Tip was aroused
bright and early, by his brother, and soon there-
after, together with other household belongings,
he was on the last stage of the journey to the
newly-acquired house and home. The distance
was short, the house being situated on a farm
adjoining his grandmother's estate.

Now that the moving of their goods and chat-
tels from one locality to another was practically
accomplished, the unsettled and already homesick
folks constituting the family began to realize that
it was no easy and simple achievement to transfer
themselves, body and soul, out of one abode and
habitat into another. Even the " Chambered Nau-
tilus " carries with it through life all the rooms
in which it has ever dwelt. Young and old were
to learn that it took a good while for the hearts
prone to stay behind in the abandoned cottage
near the Miami, to make themselves at ease in the
second house which, like a stepmother, was at first
regarded with some mistrust.

16TAKING A FRESH START 17

The new house—they called it new, though it
was in fact older than the one they had moved out
of—consisted of two main compartments on the
ground-floor, one serving as a general sitting-
room for the family, and as a sleeping-room for
the parents and their daughters, Newell and little
Cynthia; the other being devoted to kitchen pur-
poses; while upstairs was the third chamber, a
spacious garret where' the boys, John and Tip,
had their quarters. A narrow porch projected
in front of the principal room. Two doors, one at
the front and one at the rear, gave entrance and
egress to and from the house, and a few small
windows let in the sunlight, and admitted quiet
and peaceful views either of green fields in sum-
mer or of dazzling plains of snow in winter. Such
scanty and rude accommodations as were afforded
by so cramped a tenement sufficed the simple
needs of the family for a term of two or three
years, and then an " addition" was built,
more than doubling the original size of the
structure.

No great length of time was required to transfer
from the wagons to the new house its indispen-
sable furnishings: chairs, table, bureau, beds and
bedding, dishes and crockery, cooking utensils,
spinning-wheels and reel, the mantel clock, the
cedar-wood chest, and the beautifully fashioned18	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

cradle of polished black walnut, in which all the
children had been rocked.

Whilst the unloading and proper adjusting of
the household effects to their new places went on,
Tip, with healthy curiosity, and accompanied by
Coley, took occasion to make a timid exploration
of the near premises of the strange habitation in
which he was to dwell. Not far from the back door
he discovered, under a low shed, a furnace-like
form of brick, which, from its peculiar masonry,
he recognized as the bake-oven, for heating the
arched hollow of which he foresaw he was destined
to gather and split fuel many and many a time
thereafter. Another structure of domestic impor-
tance, because it supplied a crude element for
soap-making, also claimed the boy's attention.
This was the ash-hopper, from which the straw
and leached ashes of last year had not yet been
emptied, and under the drain-trough of which
stood a large, round-bottomed iron kettle half full
of dark brown lye. More provocative of curiosity
than the bake-oven or the ash-hopper, was a snug,
miniature brick building which had a tight-fitting
oaken door, but no window or other opening save
a small aperture near the top of its rear wall.
This dwarf castle, which looked like a big toy and
displayed on one of its sides the initials H. P.,
formed by an expert arrangement of black bricksTAKING A FRESH START 19

set into the red wall, was the smoke-house, with
the obvious uses and obscurer functions of which
the boys were to become well acquainted, for it
also entailed upon them various periodical tasks.
When the " gammons " and the shoulders of
pork were hung up to cure in this dark fastness, a
pungent smoke, surcharged with creosote, had to
be kept rising, an incense best produced from a
smoldering fire of hickory sticks and corncobs,
which combustibles, of chemic virtue, were sup-
plied with somewhat of superstitious care. And
in the smoke-house was deposited the pickling-vat,
a huge hogshead of strong brine wherein the hams
were treated before being cured by smoking, and
in which the bacon was preserved. Owing to its
dungeon-like, not to say infernal, suggestions, the
smoke-house was utilized by the boys in ways that
added a tang of melodramatic adventure to their
sport. The murky cell was a good hiding-place,—
an ideal cave.for witches, an admirable robbers'
den, a strong prison in which to confine captured
" Indians,"—a grotto in which gnomes and swart
fairies might lurk, and a terrible chamber of ordeal
in which to prove who could longest endure to be
locked up enshrouded by the smothering acrid
smoke, without calling for release from suffoca-
tion.

What further explorations and discoveries Tip20	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

and his dog may have made on that first morning,
need not be detailed. Not until many days, weeks,
and months had gone by did the boy feel himself to
be altogether familiar with his changed abode and
its accessories.

Family life in the new house, especially dur-
ing cold weather, gathered about the two fire-
places, that of the kitchen and that of the front
room. For several years the household managed
to get along without a cooking-stove, and when one
of those innovating inventions was at last received
from a Dayton foundry where it was cast, the in-
stallation of it caused quite a stir and was wit-
nessed by congratulating neighbors. Before its
advent, boiling, frying, and baking were done on
the glowing coals of the hearth, or by means of
pots and kettles suspended over the fire from pot-
hooks hung upon the swinging crane; and those
convenient utensils, the cast-iron bake-kettle and
the Dutch oven or " reflector," were also in
common use.

Attractive indeed was the kitchen fire-place,
with its savory associations, its culinary steams
and appetizing odors of bubbling mush-pots, new
hominy or samp, rich succotash, buckwheat cakes,
and pumpkin pies; but the vestal hearth and sacred
altar of that rural home was the ingle which
burned in the common sitting-room. The deep,TAKING A FRESH START 21

wide fire-place, occupying large space in a corner
of the room, had a broad hearth made by laying
smooth-surfaced flag-stones, of irregular shapes,
in a bed of sand; and the crevices between the
stones formed convenient cozy harborage for
domestic crickets, which nightly chirped with
cheerful persistency that would have delighted the
Peerybingles in Dickens's '' Christmas Story.'' In
the wall or jamb at the right side of the chimney
was a square niche or recess called the stockhole.
Though now obsolete, its very name forgotten, the
useful stockhole was, in earlier days, a familiar
feature of many a rural home. It served as a
convenient receptacle for any small article in fre-
quent demand, as a spool, a ball of yarn, a thimble,
a husking-peg, a pair of candle-snuffers, or a bottle
of ink. Just below the stockhole depended a
turkey-wing with which to brush ashes from the
hearth, and in the opposite chimney-corner stood
a home-made broom, perhaps of Buckeye splint.
Very important members of the household were the
strong, homely fire-shovel, and her mate, the stout
tongs with " his long legs and short thighs, little
head and no eyes."

Seldom was the fire suffered to go out, but if,
by chance, this misfortune happened, then, losing
no time, some one, usually a boy, ran to the nearest
neighbor's to " borrow fire," which Promethean22	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

element was conveyed either as live coals held in
a shovel, or in the form of a burning brand plucked
from the hearth, or a handful of ignited splinters
and strips of hickory bark. The bearer of such
a flambeau, running at full speed, might have been
likened in fancy to a Greek torch-bearer of the
ancient world.

The tinder-box, with accompanying flint and
steel, not infrequently lent its enkindling spark to
coax a ruddy blaze; and Lucifer matches, just com-
ing into common use, could be purchased at the
" store," costing twenty-five cents a hundred.
Brown earthenware lamps, such as are to-day seen
in the cabins of mountaineers in eastern Kentucky
and Tennessee, furnished much of the light of
other days for Ohio homes. In lieu of such primi-
tive vessels, country folks improvised makeshift
oil-lamps of even simpler form. It is related of
the sister poets, Alice and Phoebe Cary, that in
girlhood, when their home was at " Clovernook,''
near Cincinnati, they wrote many of their early
poems by the glimmer of a lamp consisting of '' a
saucer of melted lard with a bit of rag for wick."
Similar domestic contrivances were occasionally
resorted to by Tip who, choosing to be alone on
some nocturnal search or study, would steal away
to the kitchen, or up the dark stairway to the
garret, carrying his dimly-burning taper.TAKING A FRESH START 23

Candles, of course, were in general use, and
many of these were of domestic manufacture. Tip
often watched the process of making " tallow-
dips, '' and also, at a later period, the neater method
of making candles, a half a dozen or a dozen at a
time, by casting the tallow in a tin mold made for
the purpose.

In the economics of farm life, a barn including
horse-stable, cow-shed, and corn-crib, was of prime
utility, and this indispensable structure had been
roughly provided, in the shape of temporary log
buildings, before Tip's father came into posses-
sion of the property. But so unsightly and so in-
adequate to the ordinary needs of husbandry were
the rude shelter-houses erected for the exigency
of original settlement, that it became one of the
first pressing duties of the new proprietor to pull
down the log cabins and replace them by a com-
modious barn of a more modern type. The great
sills and beams for this all-important building
were measured and fashioned in the woods, from
trees carefully selected by the boss carpenter be-
fore they were felled. Here the timbers were hewn
into shape by the broad-ax, and properly mortised
and tenoned by means of auger and chisel, for
their destined place in the frame. Here, also, on
the very ground where the oaks grew from which
they were made, the shingles were split with froe24	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

and mallet, and shaven with the drawing-knife to
the proper thickness by a skilled workman sitting
astride a " shaving-horse." Tip followed with in-
tense interest and ever increasing vigilant curios-
ity every process of the architecture, and with
exultant satisfaction he saw the completed temple
to Ceres, with its spacious threshing-floor, its bay,
its mows for grain and hay, its bins, its stalls for
the horses, and its rack for the comfortable fod-
dering of cattle. Room was provided for the fan-
mill or windmill, which separated the chaff from
the wheat; also for the corn-sheller and the cutting-
box; for wagon, plow, harrow, pitchfork, grain-
cradle, sickle, and scythe.

Mention need scarcely be made of the useful
but not ornamental hen-roost, near the barn;
nor of the cozy sheepfold and the various
pens where swine were fed with corn on the cob,
or summoned, grunting, to the slop-trough;
nor of the sties in which the favored old sows
and their numerous squealing children were
segregated.

Near the dwelling-house, good old Hurtin Proud,
the former owner of the place, had inclosed with
palings a ground-space in which grew such vege-
tables, herbs, and hardy flowers as best pleased
his homely tastes. This area in later years was
transformed into one of the most beautiful ofTAKING A FRESH START 25

garden-plots. Under the constant loving care of
Tip's mother and sisters, the dooryard was rapidly-
stocked with decorative trees and shrubs, snow-
ball, lilac, burning-bush, and others, and the porch
was so embowered in a luxuriant tangle of those
domestic favored vines, the " Seven Sisters " and
the " Baltimore Belle," that the homestead came
to be known throughout the neighborhood by the
name of Rose Cottage.

North of the house and garden-plot there was
a young orchard, the size of which was soon much
increased by the setting out of a considerable num-
ber and variety of select fruit-trees, apple, cherry,
and peach, purchased of the Shakers, at Union
Village, near Lebanon. Tip hastened to make most
intimate acquaintance with many enticing fruits,
the familiar names of which give a color of poesy
and romance to orchard nomenclature,—such
charming descriptives, for example, as Prince's
Early Harvest, Seek-no-Further, Maiden's Blush,
Belleflower, and Golden Pippin, distinguishing fa-
vorite varieties of apple, and, among the names
of choice peaches, Red Rareripe, Honest John,
and the Red-cheeked Melocotoon.

Two annual festivals were held in the heart and
imagination of Tip and Ms brother and sisters: the
first was in the season of bloom and fragrance,
when the orchards looked and breathed Paradise ;26	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

the other, in autumn, when the magic fingers of
the frost wrought a wondrous change in almost
every aspect of nature.—With a visual delight
resembling ecstasy the children beheld that most
enchanting miracle of spring, the rapid flores-
cence of the plum, the pear, and the cherry tree,
with their snowy blossoms, and of the apple laden
with flowers pink and white, and the peach tree
glowing like a roseate cloud! The pageant which
autumn brought to wood and field, to garden and
orchard, was scarcely less impressive to the young
people, who recognized in its magnificence of
decay the forerunner of those coming " melan-
choly days," the " saddest of the year," of which
Bryant had so beautifully sung.

As with the advent- of spring were associated
the delights of sugar-making, in the maple grove,
so with the approach of cold weather in the fall
were connected the pleasures attendant upon the
time of apple-gathering and cider-making, when
the routine of ordinary labor was relieved by
many a frolic. Dozens of barrels of delicious
juice were squeezed from the brown, dripping
pomace by the crushing force of the huge rude
press with its immense wooden screw turned by
long levers; and countless gallons of cider were
simmered to thick syrup, in which pared apples
were later boiled (in their own rich blood) un-TAKING A FEESH START 27

til transformed into that quintessence of pome,
apple-butter.

This brief survey of some of the most conspicu-
ous objects connected with the new homestead can
only glimpse toward the sugar-camp, replete with
its many peculiar attractions. A feature of the
place, which, in Tip's mind at least, was of su-
preme importance, owing to the incalculable
amount of pleasure it afforded him at all seasons
of the year, was a small stream of water known
by the undistinguishing name of the Eun.

The Eun was a spring-fed brook whose shallow
current, clear as crystal, took its source from a
grassy level in Lackey's woods, and, wandering
through the farm from west to east, flowed in front
of the cottage within a hundred feet of the
threshold. In times of freshet this variable stream
would rage and roar like a petty river, swelling
and foaming with such destructive angry violence
as to destroy fences and sweep away all the pains-
takenly constructed dams the boys had builded of
sticks and stones plastered with mud, and all the
little water-wheels nicely whittled out of pine, and
all the tiny canoes and sailboats bravely launched
upon the stormy waters. But in the periods of
drought this streamlet would purl or creep along
its laggard course scarce more than silvering its
bed with a moist film hardly sufficient to allay the28	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

thirst of the crowd of yellow-winged butterflies
that settled on its margin. The Run never quite
dried up and was always a playfellow who had
nothing to do but to waste the idle hours. In
summer-time the children waded in its tepid rip-
ples, or gathered pebbles from its bed, or mint or
yellow cowslip blossoms from its oozy edges; in
winter they used to slide over its glassy surface
or they wandered beside its crooked shore, never
weary of looking at the ice-jewels formed by the
play of the running water fretting against mossy
stones, gnarled roots, and bunches of grass.

But most of all was the brook alluring because,
as it forever ran twinkling and whispering on its
way, it coaxed and dared Tip and his adventurous
elder sister to follow wherever it tempted their
feet. Often the truant children, starting from its
bubbling origin, would trace its windings on past
the cottage, through the sugar-camp, past Throck-
morton's stone spring-house, then across the Mink-
town road at the point where lay a huge bowlder
of the period of the glacial drift, then into the deep
valley of the Big Woods where it joined New-
man's Bun, which stream pursued its devious
course for several miles and at last mingled its cur-
rent with the waters of the Little Miami River.
One attraction of mysterious interest, not far from
the creek, wag an Indian mound, where the chil-TAKING A FRESH START 29

dren went to seek for relics of the Stone Age,—
flint arrow-heads, and, perhaps, ornaments of pol-
ished obsidian.

Never did there exist a grander botanical
garden and general museum of natural his-
tory than the Big "Woods afforded. In it, at the
several seasons of the year, the young ramblers
gathered a wonderful variety of wild flowers,
spring-beauties, anemones, violets, the puccoon,
the adder-tongue, the bluebell, and the columbine.
They took curious pains to learn the haunts and
qualities of columbo, spikenard, Solomon's seal,
ginseng, hoarhound, snake-root, and elecampane,—
of spicebrush, prickly-ash, Indian turnip, boneset,
and comfrey. They found in the Big Woods,
beech-drops, sweet-knots, and marvelous kinds of
mushrooms and lichens. There also grew haws
(black and red), and wild grapes and wild goose-
berries, and, best of all, May-berry trees bearing
delicate fruit; and there, in due season, was gath-
ered store of hickory-nuts and walnuts and but-
ternuts.

Hard by the northern bank of Newman's Run, in
the very heart of the woods, Tip and his sister
discovered a gigantic hollow sycamore, with a fan-
tastic arched opening which served as a door to the
dusky interior, which was capacious enough to
afford ample room for half a dozen children when-30	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ever they chose to huddle there for shelter during
the continuance of a summer shower. This de-
lightful house of nature was furnished, in sylvan
fashion, with seats of stone, after the loamy floor
had been covered with a carpet of thick soft moss;
and no costly rug from the Orient was of rarer pat-
tern, or could have given such a sense of luxury
to these young recluses of the greenwood, as did
that living, fragrant cloth of green and gold.IV

THE BIG WOODS

In the days of Tip's early boyhood the forests
of Ohio were fairly well stocked with game. The
wild deer had not yet been exterminated, and,
occasionally, in hilly sections of the State, a brown
bear, that solitary forager, skulked about in search
of fruit or honey to please his fastidious appetite.
Large game was especially abundant in the woods
of Indiana, as the boy learned from two of his
uncles who, as pioneers, had purchased land and
built houses in the Hoosier State, and who made
annual visits to Ohio, bringing in their covered
wagons such commodities as hoop-poles, venison,
swamp-cranberries, and, alas, the " shaking
ague," which no amount of quinine could cure.
These brave and well-beloved uncles, John and
Britton, had interesting stories to tell of strug-
gle and hardship in the sparsely settled region
whither they had gone to " grow up with the
country," where " Molly Brooks " and other
half-breed Indians still lingering, illustrated by
their squalid habits the natural bent of the
aborigines.

3132	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

Though it never chanced that Tip caught sight
of a deer, a bear, a wolf, or a panther, running
wild in southern Ohio, he had many opportunities
to observe various small indigenous quadru-
peds, as well as wild fowl, in their natural haunts.
Wild turkeys, geese, and ducks were not uncom-
mon; migratory pigeons, pausing from their
flight, made rendezvous by countless thousands
in the trees on his father's farm, sometimes cov-
ering so thickly the boughs upon which they
alighted that Tip had only to fire an old shot-gun
anywhere toward the sky to bring down a shower
of birds. Frequently the red fox was seen fur-
tively gliding in search of prey, and the weather-
wise ground-hog or wood-chuck was often cap-
tured in his hibernating burrow. Opossums, pole-
cats, minks, and weasels were so numerous and
so thievish that hen-roosts had to be warily pro-
tected from their ravages: often the squawking
of frightened chickens roused the farmer from
midnight slumber and summoned him to the barn-
yard, carrying in one hand a lantern of perforated
tin and in the other some hastily snatched up
firearm.

The excitement of raccoon hunting by night, with
dogs and gun, was much enjoyed by youths of a
sportsmanlike turn. Trees in which the pursued
animal took refuge were chopped down by light ofTHE BIG WOODS

33

a bonfire; and the eager hounds rushing to seize
the anticipated game even while the tree was fall-
ing, were sometimes crushed to death under its
trunk or limbs.

Skill in shooting and in taking care of guns, in
making ramrods and in molding bullets, was con-
sidered part of the necessary attainment of every
accomplished man or boy. There was at least one
gunsmith in every country neighborhood. Tip's
brother was the envied possessor of an excellent
rifle, and also of a handsome shot-gun which he
bought at second-hand from one Washington
Noggle. This memorable fowling-piece, the stock
of which was of hard, polished, curly maple, was
marked by a silver plate on which were engraved
the words Henry Clay. Whether " Henry Clay "
was the name of the gun, or whether the gun had
once belonged to the celebrated Kentucky states-
man, was a matter of much conjecture. Whatever
may have been its history, it was certainly held
in political high regard by its new owner, and
nobody doubted that it was a faithful Whig, even
though it might never have been handled by Harry
of the West. Tip often carried " Henry Clay "
while his brother bore the heavier rifle, as the
boys trudged all day through the enchanting in-
tricacies of the Big Woods, hunting squirrels, and
almost unconsciously schooling themselves in34	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

every cunning secret of wood-craft. Their hunt-
ing seldom failed to load them with an overburden
of squirrels, gray or red, which were strung on
strips of pawpaw bark and were '' toted '' over the
shoulder like a traveler's pack. Usually far more
game was brought home than the young sports-
men had the patience to skin and prepare for the
skillet. When the snows of winter covered the
ground, the sport of tracking and catching rabbits
took the place of squirrel hunting.

At the period of which we now write, before the
forest had lost its primeval character, nature's
economy supplied for man directly from her wild
stores more than one luxury,1' without money and
without price." She prepared apiaries in the
trunks of trees, and her woods, like the rocks of
the Holy Land, flowed with honey gathered from
a thousand blossomy sources. Tip remembers that
while wandering in the woods of May or June he
often listened to a mysterious, elusive music over-
head, like invisible Ariel's " sweet airs,"—a mur-
muring sound among the tree-tops, which he knew
to be the melodious hum of swarming bees.

Other swarming and stinging insects, which
manufactured neither wax nor honey, had their
nests in the woods, and these, if molested, would
fly in fierce multitudes, and attack, with poisonous
stings, the man or the beast that had venturedTHE BIG WOODS

35

to disturb them. Sometimes it happened that an
army of " yellow-jackets," stirred up by the tread
of a horse or a dog, would torture the poor animal
to a frenzy. Most to be dreaded of all such winged
foes were those formidable hornets whose nests,
looking like small balloons of coarse brown paper,
the boys frequently came across, either hidden in
a hollow tree or hanging on some bush. These
malignant insects were easily provoked to dart
with swift force directly for their human enemy's
face, and a sting from one of them was exceed-
ingly painful.

Vague suggestions of danger and of fear haunted
the deeper forest shades even in broad daylight,
especially at times when a susceptible and credu-
lous mood came over a boy wandering alone in
solitary places unfamiliar to his feet. Blood-
curdling narratives were often spun at evening
firesides by '' old settlers '' of lively imagination,
who would relate what purported to be personal
adventures with wildcats and with other night-
prowling creatures of glowing eye-balls,—espe-
cially with the " painter," that perilous beast
which always deluded the hunter by plaintive cries
exactly as of at moaning child; and stories ancient
as the hills were told, and half-believed, of hoop-
snakes, and whip-snakes, and deadly moccasins.
And there were even worse things to be encoun-36	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

tered in the woods than ravenous beasts and
fanged serpents, so these inventors of marvels
" calculated," with solemn shakes of the head.
Tip heard a graybeard farmer tell, with serious air
and bated breath, that a " Bosjesman " had been
seen clambering and crouching among the
branches of a shell-bark hickory in the loneliest
part of the swamp-woods on the road to Utica.
What a " Bosjesman " might be or do, no one
could tell, but Tip conjectured that in all proba-
bility it was something between a gorilla and Sin-
bad's Old Man of the Mountain, and that it was
particularly fond of the taste of cowardly blood.
Soon after hearing the farmer's hoaxing story,
the boy was sent on an errand to Utica, and as
he rode by the swamp-woods he felt very much
as Tam O'Shanter must have felt,

" Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares,

Lest bogles catch him unawares."

But even more terror-inspiring than any species
of living animal,—panther, snake, or Bosjesman,
—however uncouth or monstrous,—more to be
dreaded than these, in Tip's fancy, were such in-
tangible things as jack-o'-lanterns, witches, and
ghosts; and though the lad did not believe in these,
and while he scouted the possibility of their exist-
ence, he was influenced, against his will, by theTHE BIG WOODS

37

well-authenticated hobgoblins of other people older
than himself and no less reasonable. Therefore
let it not be set down as particularly depreciative
of his courage or good sense that sometimes, to
the boy wandering alone in the woods, there came
moments when

" A sudden gust of childhood's superstitions
Blew through his memory, and, as he sped,
A darkling company of apparitions

Chased him with ghostly whispers of the dead."

Such fits of blind terror were of seldom occur-
rence, the impressions produced by the forest be-
ing almost invariably of a tranquilizing kind, and
often such as imparted inexpressible joy and spir-
itual exaltation. However, Tip did not escape
the usual experience even of the most clear-headed
people, who, astray in a thick and pathless woods,
become bewildered and move helplessly in a maze,
unable to determine their whereabouts. Just as
one learns to observe the course of his bad dreams
and to wait with uneasy hope the moment of
awakening, so the lost boy endures with a certain
dogged interest his temporary confusion and dis-
tress, dizzily notes the brook running in the wrong
direction, wonders why the sun is setting in the
north, and hopes creation will regulate itself in
time to save him from utter paralysis and the
pangs of slow starvation.38	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

It is impossible for words to exaggerate the
amount and intensity of the pleasure which Tip
and his brother enjoyed together in the woods.
There was an irresistible charm, a mystic and al-
most supernatural fascination which drew their
feet habitually to tramp and loiter, to ramble and
explore, up hill and down dale, under the shade
of majestic trees, usually in the daytime, but now
and then in the darkness and solemn hush of
night. During these nocturnal excursions John
took delight in studying the weird aspects and pe-
culiar sounds characteristic of the mysterious and
obscure forest. He would call Tip's attention to
the loamy odors of the dank, leaf-sheltered covert,
so unlike the breezy fragrance of the open fields
in sunshine. He would answer the distant bay of
a dog or the bark of a fox, and tell his young
brother about the habits of owls and bats. From
him Tip also learned much concerning the haunts
and habits of flying-squirrels, raccoons, opossums,
weasels, minks, and polecats. John led the way
to ravines where might be found decaying stumps
and logs glowing dully with what he called " fox-
fire," which, he explained, was wonderfully differ-
ent from ordinary fire, for though it gave out
light, it was always cold, and instead of being
quenched, was only made to burn brighter, by be-
ing soaked in water. With chips of this phos-THE BIG WOODS

39

phorescent substance "which they carried home, the
wood-wise adventurers rubbed their hands and
faces, thus rendering themselves miraculously
luminous, and altogether too unearthly for their
scared sisters to look upon without screaming.

Perhaps in no other region of equal area on the
earth's wide surface did nature produce a greater
variety of useful and beautiful trees than grew
and flourished in rich profusion on the hills and
plains of the Ohio Yalley at the period when the
settlement of the Old Northwest was begun. No
modern art of conservation can restore to their
pristine grandeur the magnificent forests which
Christopher Gist, the surveyor, explored one hun-
dred and sixty years ago, and which afterwards
witnessed the back-woods adventures of Daniel
Boone. Photography was invented too late to pre-
serve upon its magic films any glimpse of the orig-
inal Ohio woods, the best authentic pictures of
which were painted only in words, by some of our
pioneer writers who strove to make the Western
groves

" Live in description, and look green in song."

Our literature contains no truer delineation of the
primeval forest, and no more genuine reproduc-
tion of the feeling produced by the reality of it,
than are happily to be found in the elaborate verse40	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

of the pastoral, " Miami Woods," by the pioneer
poet, William Davis Gallagher, who, with the fidel-
ity of an art as true as it is simple, transferred
very nature to the printed page in melodious lines
from which the following characteristic passage is
quoted:

" Around me here rise up majestic trees
That centuries have nurtured: graceful elms,

Which interlock their limbs among the clouds;
Dark-columned walnuts, from whose liberal store
The nut-brown Indian maids their baskets fill'd
Ere the first Pilgrims knelt on Plymouth Rock;
Gigantic sycamores, whose mighty arms
Sheltered the Redman in his wigwam prone,

What time the Norsemen roamed our chartless seas;
And towering oaks, that from the subject plain
Sprang when the builders of the tumuli
First disappeared, and to the conquering hordes
Left these, the dim traditions of their race
That rise around, in many a form of earth
facing the plain, but shrouded in the gloom
Of dark, impenetrable shades, that fall
From the far centuries."

In the days of the pioneers, as in a remote age
and country alluded to in the Old Testament, " a
man was famous according as he lifted up axes
upon thick trees." Now for more than one hun-
dred and twenty years a relentless war has been
waged against the once grand and glorious forestsTHE BIG WOODS

41

of Ohio, such as those within whose green glooms
Tip and his brother rambled as wild and free as a
couple of young Indians might have roamed there
not half a century before.

Of necessity, the first work for the new settler
in Good Old Times, was to " chop out the night
and chop in the morn,"—to make a " clearing "
for his cabin and his garden, and to extend, as
rapidly as he could, his arable domain. What a
Herculean labor for the axman to redeem a field
from thraldom to an army of gigantic trees, has
often been recorded in verse and in prose; but we
doubt if any one who has not observed or partici-
pated in the slow and toilsome process of effecting
a clearing in the woods, can have an adequate idea
of the difficulty which such a task entailed.

As in other wars, so in the fight against trees,
fire followed the ruin wrought by steel. Burning
log-heaps were to be seen, in the dry season, on
every farm, and the wasteful sacrifice of timber
was renewed year after year. This wholesale cre-
mation of logs, stumps, and huge brush-heaps was
a destructive enterprise just suited to a boy's
fancy. Is the peculiar, savage pleasure which peo-
ple take in watching the ravages of a conflagra-
tion part of our primitive nature, like the instinct
for hunting and for war? Perhaps there is no
man living who is not susceptible to the charm of42	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

fire, and who would not take satisfaction in kin-
dling a heap of dry brush-wood to see the smoke
curling skyward and to hear the crackle and roar
of billowing flames.

Strong the muscle and steady the trained nerve
which directed the woodman's ringing stroke in
the strenuous art of properly felling a huge poplar
or a mammoth oak, and only a small number of
stalwart champions gained reputation for both
skill and rapidity in this mighty business. Tip
recalls with what thrilling suspense he watched the
process,—admired the precision of each flashing
fall of the ax, saw the white chips fly, and waited
breathlessly until, when a deep notch had been cut
on either side of the steadily poised trunk and the
proud leafy column seemed to stand firm only by
virtue of its own dignity, a scarcely perceptible
tremor shook its foliage, its high top swayed, and
crashing down through the broken arms of its;
affrighted comrades, the doomed tree thundered
to the ground,—the tragic close of perhaps five
hundred years of growth and triumphant mon-
archy ! There lay the prostrate pride of the for-
est,—mere lumber,—soon to be despoiled of its
green boughs, to be hacked into cordwood, split
into fence-rails, sliced into timbers and planks for
the building of houses and barns.

Just as wheat and corn were taken to the grist-THE BIG WOODS

43

mill and there exchanged for flour and meal, logs
were hauled to the saw-mill either to be sold for
cash or bartered for sawn boards. What boy
who has lived in a wooded country, needs have
described for him the stout, low log-wagon with
its " boom " and clanking length of iron chain
which bound the saw-log to its funeral car? Per-
haps some reader of this page may have assisted
in rolling a bulky section of some great oak, ash,
poplar, or walnut tree, upon the log-wagon, and,
while the squat vehicle was slowly drawn by an
ox team, he may have ridden astride the huge bole,
to the mill where it was delivered over to the teeth
of the fierce vertical saw, which, with furious exe-
cution, tore through its very heart. The fallen
giants of the woods always commanded Tip's mel-
ancholy sympathy. He sometimes even shed tears
when a favorite forest tree was cut down, and he
followed its dead trunk, like a mourner, to the
saw-mill, which he hated with a respectful anger
mixed with admiration and awe.V

GOING TO SCHOOL

When first domiciled with the rest of the family
in his new home, Tip, though quite young, was
old enough to pay some attention to the talk he
heard about the Ridgeville District School, to
which his brother John was immediately sent and
which he himself expected soon to attend. The
teacher was one William Blank, familiarly styled
Billy, a personage much renowned for his mathe-
matical knowledge, and physically remarkable on
account of a muscular defect which constrained
him to hold his head constantly on one side after
the fashion of the Laputans described in " Gul-
liver's Travels." Moreover, the pedagogue was
blind of one eye. Though never a pupil of this
learned gentleman, Tip has a faint recollection
of once having seen him standing before a small
blackboard upon which he was making figures with
a piece of chalk. Other and more definite mem-
ories of Mr. William Blank, if Tip ever had them,
have altogether faded from his mind, and the
famed mathematician vanishes like a cloud in the
dim atmosphere of the Past.

44GOING TO SCHOOL	45

After a short time, the family being con-
veniently established, our Boy, though subjected
at first to some oversight and counsel exercised
by his brother and his elder sister Newell, was
gradually initiated into the mysteries, privileges,
restraints, enjoyments, and grievances of his first
schooling, and into the experience inseparable
from daily association with different kinds of boys
and girls in a petty social world hitherto un-
known to him. In order to reach the house of
instruction he had to walk a distance of nearly
two miles, along a level road bordered by wood-
land. The schoolhouse, in the midst of a very
small and scattering village, was a surviving speci-
men of veritable pioneer log-architecture, in which
the children of the early settlers had learned their
a—4)—c's. It had no windows to speak of; its
heavy deal door swung on strap-hinges and was
fastened by means of a padlock; the floor was of
puncheons, uneven, and somewhat decayed; the
scanty furniture consisted of a few rude desks and
rough benches.

Presiding with a somewhat formal but nowise
strict control over a small flock of pupils gathered
together in this log-cabin, was an amiable gentle-
man, gray-haired and fatherly, whom Tip at first
held in high reverence, but by and by began to
regard with a certain pensive feeling of gratitude46	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

mingled with, something akin to compassion. Un-
der the tuition of " old Linus " the lad made such,
progress that he quickly learned to read in the
Second Reader, and to spell in a Blue Spelling
Book; but he was embarrassed, at the beginning
of his scholarly career, by strained relations with
the class to which be was assigned. This class
consisted of himself and one other boy, a good-
natured fellow, endowed with an exceedingly wide
mouth,—who grinned perpetually, looking down
from a superior altitude on Tip, than whom he
was fully a bead taller. Secretly but earnestly
the hypersensitive urchin besought old Linus to
put him into some other class, explaining deli-
cately that he could not endure the largeness or
the mobility of Alexander's mouth; and the com-
pliant master, amused by the aesthetic petition,
transferred the sufferer according to his request.
But, when next called to the floor to recite, Tip
was chagrined to find he had jumped from the
frying-pan into the fire. The new class, kindly
created for his relief, consisted, like the former
organization, of only two members, himself and
a fat, giggling girl named Emelyne, whose saucy
black eyes proved far more aggressive and de-
vouring than Alexander's extravagant but well-
meaning mouth. In deep confusion the boy once
more appealed to Linus, saying that, after all, heGOING TO SCHOOL	47

believed lie could learn more in a class of his own
sex than in one of mixed character, whereupon he
was returned to the class of Alexander, in which
he usually stood next to head.

Old Linus belonged to that antiquated order of
pedagogues to whom the name of " preceptor "
properly applies. He might have been monitor
for any of the exemplary boys in Miss Edgeworth's
" Moral Tales." In his methods and ideals, he
kept alive some excellent traditions of colonial
modes of training children. He was careful to
teach good manners, and went so far as to require
his pupils to imitate what he supposed to be the
polite usages of people of " quality " and even
of those who dwelt in castles and courts. Before
beginning and after closing each recitation, every
class, its members ranged in orderly rank, saluted
the master with a becoming reverence. This pre-
liminary being over, other ceremonies followed.
All the boys formed a sort of military line, facing
the girls arranged opposite in a seemly row, and
when the word '' Obeisance '' was pronounced, the
young cavaliers responded with an elaborate bow,
receiving in return a profound curtesy from the
ladies. Nor was the practice of conventional eti-
quette restricted to polite rehearsals on the
puncheon floor of the humble log schoolhouse.
The boys were admonished to practice gentle-48	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

manly deportment while on the road to and from
school, and, above all, never to neglect the gallant
habit of lifting the hat, on meeting a woman.

Amiable and urbane as he was, and though pos-
sessed of efficient qualities, perhaps Linus relied
rather too fondly on the sufficiency of outward
drill and automatic manners and morals, as many
other teachers have done before and since his day.
He made the mistake of relegating to machinery
what can be accomplished only by direct action of
the vital spirit. One of his mechanical agencies
which did not accomplish the purpose of its in-
ventor, was a wooden paddle on one side of which
was painted in capital letters the word IN, and
on the other side, the word OUT. This reversi-
ble small signboard was suspended from a nail
driven into the door-frame near the latch of the
schoolhouse door. The theory of the device was
plausible: whenever a pupil left the room, he was
expected to adjust the paddle so as to tell the
school that somebody was out, and when he re-
turned he was supposed to change the signal so
as to assure all that everybody was in, the rule
being that only one at a time should be out. Like
all human inventions, this ingenious implement
was liable to abuse. A boy about to make his
exit, would give the paddle a complete turn, mak-
ing it falsely say IN, thus tempting others to fol-GOING TO SCHOOL	49

low him and repeat the easy trick, until, in a very
orderly and noiseless manner, half the school
would glide forth into the yard, though the demure
wooden governor unblushingly reported all pres-
ent, while the master nodded over a book, or busied
himself decorating with leathern spectacles and
a conical paper cap the sulky dunce on the stool
of disgrace. On a memorable afternoon in May,
the schoolmaster fell asleep in his chair, and his
mischievous flock, every lamb of it, escaped to the
green grass and pleasant sunshine out of doors.
When the master awoke and looked out of the
narrow back window, he beheld a picturesque
scene: All the girls were in a farm-wagon which
chanced to stand idle near the playground, and all
the boys were pulling the vehicle towards a
grassy, downward slope! The rat-tat of the ferule
on the window-sash summoned the romping tru-
ants to their desks and lessons; the decorum of
the hour was perfect; and the paddle for once
told the truth, displaying the right monosyllable.
The pupils were IN.

Tip was very young when the rude log school-
house in which good, kind old Linus taught the
country lads to make their gallant " obeisance,"
and the girls to drop a graceful " curtesy," was
pulled down to give place to a modest church, and
a new schoolhouse was erected near the edge of a50	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

pleasant strip of woodland about a quarter of
a mile east of the village. The school was trans-
ferred to this new building, and was put in the
charge of a new teacher,—a well-born, well-bred
young gentleman from New England, who knew
Latin, and whose mode of sounding the letter a,
and of suppressing the trill of the letter r, cre-
ated surprise and prejudicial comment, until it
was discovered that his so-called " Yankee
brogue " implied no defect of brain or of
heart.

To the new schoolhouse and the new master,
Tip, still very averse to education, was promptly
convoyed. He had been but a few days in sub-
jection to the unpleasantly severe rules and regu-
lations of the stranger from Massachusetts, when
an adventure befell, which he never forgot, and
which involved with him a little girl whom the
gentle reader may know by the name of Romania.
She was a very pretty child, daintily attired in a
pink frock with a white pinafore, and the boy,
whose restless gaze chanced to wander across the
middle aisle to the girls' side of the schoolroom,
encountered her large, innocent blue eyes gazing
in his direction. The smile which met his, that
moment, in friendly greeting, seemed to reveal
that the little maid was, like himself, a compara-
tive novice in school experience; and he felt thatGOING TO SCHOOL	51

she and he were alien to the usages of that arbi-
trary and uncongenial world, and that they sym-
pathized with each other. Scarcely had their eyes
exchanged " speechless messages " before Tip
was aware of the clamor and commotion which
told him that " intermission " had begun, and,
hurrying out, he soon discovered Bomania stand-
ing shyly aloof from the boisterous groups swarm-
ing and storming over the playground. Abruptly
he spoke to her, and something very like the fol-
lowing colloquy took place :

''You don't like to go to school, do you? "
" No. This is the first I ever went.—I'm going
to run home now at recess. Won't you come along
with me? "

" Yes; I'll go: where is your home? "

" Over yonder, not very far," she said, pointing
the way; " we'll go across the field. Come on,—
I'll show you.—We have ripe cherries and Hormel
apples."

Off the unapprehensive truants hastened to-
gether, out of the school-yard, across the wagon-
road, into an open field through which a foot-path
led to an orchard and finally to a cottage with a
low porch. The girl went into the house, and soon
returned to the porch, accompanied by her mother,
who, with a look of surprise, asked:

" What does this mean, Bomania? Who is this52	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

boy? Is anything the matter, my child? Why
did you come home? "

" Nothing, mother; only it is play-time, and I
told him we had ripe cherries and apples."

" But who is this strange boy? " inquired the
lady, smiling.

" I don't know; but he is nice, and I like him.
He don't want to go to school, either."

Tip gave his name, not relishing the idea of
being described as " this strange boy."

The tempting fruit was forthcoming; then the
mother, in some anxiety, but with a good-humored
expression which was not lost on the boy, said:
"Now hurry back to school."

Hand in hand the children started on their re-
turn across the open field, but they took a different
path, well-known to Romania, which led them
away from the direct course and near to a large,
" girdled " tree, under which grew a thick sod
of wild violets, a wonderful show!—the ground
was carpeted with blue!—Tip never saw, before
or since, so many violets in blossom all at one
time and in one place! The children plucked these
" Johnny-jump-ups," by handfuls, and, quite for-
getful of school, sat down on the sward, and, count-
ing out the violets into equal bunches, made be-
lieve these dainty flowers were soldiers, and pitted
them, one against another, pair by pair, forcingGOING TO SCHOOL	53

them to lock their slender necks together, and then
pulling their stems until one, or sometimes both,
of the tiny contestants lost its head. It turned
out that every one of Tip's brave blue-bonnets
went down, overcome by the superior strength or
skill of the enemy's plucky fighters, and Romania
came off victress, with at least a dozen untried
champions in her lap.—Now it occurred to the
loiterers, in a flash, that they ought to be in school!
What would the sedate, stern new master say
and do? What would Tip's brother and sister
think?

Arising hastily from the fragrant battle-
ground, the idlers, with fast-beating hearts, ran
to the fence which separated the field from the
road, clambered over its high rails, which were
surmounted by " stakes and riders," hurried
across the road and over the stile which brought
them into the school-yard, and slowly advanced to
the closed door. Palpitating with excitement, they
paused to take breath and summon courage.
There was only one thing to do!—Tip softly
opened the door and stepped within,—Romania
timidly pacing behind him. Forty pairs of eyes
were focussed upon the tardy innocents. The lad
made straight for his assigned desk, mortified and
perplexed. A giggle ran from girl to girl, and the
boys exploded into derisive merriment. Romania54	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

took her seat, blushing scarlet, and then began to
cry. This caused a sudden lull in the laughing
and noise, and it seemed to Tip that all the girls
were gazing curiously at him, and all the boys
staring in silence upon Romania.

The only punishment or unpleasant feeling suf-
fered by Tip, in consequence of the episode of the
violets, save this of being laughed at by the school,
was a still more aggravating case of teasing which
greatly angered and disgusted him. No sooner
was the school dismissed than a lubberly boy, with
a prodigious head,—a half-silly fellow who went
by the nickname of " Balloon Head,"—winked at
him, and drawled out: " You are sweet on her."

The acquaintance between Tip and Eomania
was destined to be of short duration, owing to the
circumstance that after she had attended the school
for only a few weeks her folks removed with her
somewhere to the " Far West," and thus she van-
ished from the life and the knowledge of the boy
with whom she had played so happily on that
pleasant morning when cherries were ripening and
violets were in bloom.

Becoming accustomed to the routine of school
life, and being of a sociable temperament, Tip nat-
urally fell into acquaintance, more or less familiar,
with most of the boys and girls whom he neces-
sarily met daily in the schoolroom or on the play-GOING TO SCHOOL	55

ground. Inevitably lie formed friendships and en-
mities, had his sweethearts and his rivals, and
shared in the petty romance, comedy, and tragedy
of the groping, passionate period of transition
from childhood to youth. Among the associations
of those simple, sincere days of unsophisticated,
though intense and earnest, country experiences,
may be recorded a typical instance, the heroine of
which was another rural maid, who by the chance
of propinquity succeeded Romania in Tip's com-
radeship without supplanting her in his equal af-
fections. In his diurnal pilgrimages to school,
along the public road, the boy had to pass a gate
opening into a lane leading to a farmhouse where
dwelt one of his girl classmates who, every morn-
ing, with reading-book and small willow basket in
hand, came down the lane and out through the
gate, on her way to school. One morning it hap-
pened that Tip was passing the gate just at the
moment when Lydia opened it, and the two walked
on together, talking very unreservedly, telling
each other of their likes and dislikes at school, and
of their enjoyments and troubles at home. Their
friendship grew rapidly; a common stock of inter-
est and neighborhood gossip increased their in-
timacy ; and, as a consequence, almost every even-
ing, after school was out, they managed to steal
away, unseen, as they imagined, and to saunter56	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

along, side by side, till they came to the gate where
Lydia had to turn off into the lane. They in-
vented a method by which to regulate the chances
of meeting in the morning, their simple device be-
ing to place a cobblestone upon a rail of the zigzag
fence near the gateway at which they parted for
the night. If she should go by this trysting place
before he did, of a morning, she would remove
the stone; if he got there first, he was to remove
it. The result of the compact was to make him
rise early and start to school betimes—he having
a distance of two miles to go. Occasionally, to his
sad disappointment, the stone was not to be seen
when he looked for it in its assigned place, and in
such case he went on lonesomely, sometimes blam-
ing his own tardiness, sometimes vexed because
Lydia had been in so much haste. As a rule, how-
ever, he was ahead of time, and the trusty stone
would lie for weeks untouched, keeping its amiable
secret, while regularly as the sun rose and set, the
congenial pair wended to school together every
morning, and returned together every evening.
And so their education progressed very agreeably,
for both confessed that they " liked each other
best," but no further courtship was solicited or
paid excepting that which was implied in the ex-
change of valentines and of carnelian rings, or in
the fact that Tip once gave Lydia a beautifulGOING TO SCHOOL	57

jumping-rope which, he cut with his own big-blade
knife from a wild grape-vine which had fastened
its clinging tendrils to the branches of her favorite
black-haw tree.

It would do injustice to the temperament of Tip
to conclude that he was overpartial to the com-
pany of the " gentler sex." He would have re-
sented, even with blows of his far from pugilistic
fist, any imputation that he belonged to the infatu-
ate class of " gal-boys," whom he held in con-
tempt. Nevertheless he was approaching that
period of life which brings to the blood those
Wordsworthian

" Slight shocks of young love-liking interspersed,
Whose transient pleasure mounted to the head,
And tingled through the veins."

On the boisterous playground he took his un-
avoidable risk of being crushed under the multi-
plied weight of a dozen bigger fellows using him
as the foundation of the living pile in the game of
" More on the Saw-mill "; or of being flung to a
terrible distance with dangerous velocity if he
dared accept the outermost place in the centrifugal
ring, when playing " Crack the Whip "; or of be-
ing knocked breathless by a hard ball in '' Sock-
about "; or of suffering his share of knocks and
bruises on the shins whenever he ventured to par-58	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ticipate in the merciless game of old-fashioned
English " Hockey."

Of course Tip learned to climb trees; to hurl
stones from a leathern sling; to swim, to wrestle,
and to fight with friendly antagonists of about his
own size, on proper provocation, and when in due
form the chip had been knocked from his shoulder.
But he was not of a bellicose disposition, and only
a sense of honor inculcated by the prevailing code,
or a blind frenzy of rage, could induce him to go
to war. His predilections were rather toward
Letters than Arms.

Under the tuition of the Yankee Schoolmaster
he soon found himself taking a lively interest in
all that was going on educationally. He had
learned to read from toy-books before starting to
school to good old Master Linus. He had listened
to poems and romances, read aloud by his father.
Books therefore were no new thing to him. He
was acquainted with the titles and, to some ex-
tent, with the contents of the text-books of his
brother and sister, especially with John's well-
thumbed copy of'1 Pike's Arithmetic.'' John was
no bookworm, yet he liked some kinds of literature,
especially narratives of action and adventure.
Among his favorite stories were " The Castle of
Otranto," " The Three Spaniards," and " Thad-
deus of Warsaw." Every volume that John pe-GOING TO SCHOOL	59

rused became a novel, because he read with a lively
creative imagination. It was therefore that to
his mind " Pike's Arithmetic," according to the
guiding rules of which he " ciphered " at school,
was replete with stirring incidents and dramatic
suggestions. He found matter of speculation in
the Rule of Three, and fascinating mystery in
Vulgar Fractions. There were to him exciting
possibilities in calculating Loss and Gain, and in
fixing the proper allowance for Tare and Tret.
Alligation had the complexity of a plot, and
Permutation demonstrated facts less probable
than the stories of Munchausen or of Sinbad. To
pore over the tables of exchange, on Pike's learned
page, was to travel, mentally, in far countries and
to enrich one's imaginary coffers with crowns,
pistoles, ducats, crusadoes, florins, and rix-dollars.
As in a novel, so in Pike, the most entrancing
chapters came toward the finis. The '' Promiscu-
ous Questions," which John sometimes read aloud
for the edification and astonishment of Tip, gave
themes for much lively conversation, eliciting
many puzzling inquiries and venturous answers.
The boys took a personal interest in the several
characters whose extraordinary doing was tersely
vouched for in the problems:—the Vintner who
mixed 20 gallons of Port wine, at 5s. 4d. per gal-
lon, with 12 gallons of White wine, at 5s. per gal-60	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

Ion, 30 gallons of Lisbon, at 6s. per gallon, and
20 gallons of Mountain, at 4s. 6d. per gallon; and
sold the mixture at a shrewd profit;—the person
who said he had twenty children, and that it hap-
pened there was a year and a half between their
ages;—the gentleman who had two silver cups of
unequal weight, having one cover for both; and
the enterprising merchant who shipped to Jamaica
550 pair of stockings and 460 yards of stuff, for
which he received in return 46 cwt. 3 qrs. of sugar
and 1570 lb. of indigo!—These persons and trans-
actions were as real to the credulous young arith-
meticians as were the village storekeepers, Zeke
Mulford and Sam Graham, with their dry-goods,
hardware, queensware, and boots and shoes.

There was no getting along in Arithmetic, nor,
indeed, in any branch, without a slate. This arti-
cle was a prime necessity and must be supplied
even before laying in a bottle of blue ink and a
stock of goose-quills.

As soon as Tip's busy career as a "scholar "
was fairly launched, he went, in company with
John and another expert, to Zeke Mulford's store
to purchase the indispensable slate. The esti-
mated price of this article, two " bits," the eager
lad carried tied up in the corner of a red bandanna
handkerchief. Alas! Mulford had sold his last
slate! They might, he said, try Rooney Crane'sGOING TO SCHOOL	61

place. Rooney Crane kept a toy-and-candy shop
to which boys and girls resorted to buy sugar-
kisses or sticks of licorice or a penny jews'-harp.
The three boys rushed in upon the solitary gen-
tleman where he sat placidly smoking a long-
stemmed clay pipe. " Had he any slates? " John
asked, with the air of one who had large patron-
age to bestow. Rooney brought out from under
the counter a pile of slates of different sizes.
John and the other expert examined with tedious
care each and every slate in the lot, testing the
frame for flaws of joint or defects of shape, try-
ing the surface, now on one side, then on the other,
with pencils hard and pencils soft, pricing and
quibbling with the price, until the weary merchant,
quite tired out, sat down on a stool and resumed
his smoking, leaving his customers to make up
their minds, if they possibly could. John con-
ducted the critical business with much solemnity
and grave self-importance. At last his choice
fixed upon a slate which, he remarked, was per-
haps as good as one could expect to find in so small
a town: you might do better in Cincinnati, but this
seemed really a very fair slate. But now the other
big boy, who had come along for the sole purpose
of giving the benefit of his counsel, raised a seri-
ous objection. He feared there was something
wrong,—doubted whether the mineral tablet they62	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

were about to accept was the real stuff it pre-
tended to be, or was but a cheap imitation.

" Look'e here," said he, " I don't see any green
spot: there must be a round, green spot some-
where on the slate, and it must show just the same
on both sides, or your slate's no account."

" That's so," admitted John, " I wonder I
didn't think of that."

He laid the slate down and selected another
which plainly revealed the essential vein of
green.

The brothers learned much from their school-
mates that perhaps the teacher did not know and
that their text-books certainly did not impart.
Boyhood moves in a world of its own, uses a
language seldom recorded in type, communicates
its lore and cherishes its superstitions with a jeal-
ous freemasonry which ignores the wisdom of
maturity. Tip was soon initiated into such mys-
terious facts as that if growing wheat chances to
be cropt off by grazing cattle, though it may
sprout up again, it will not then be wheat, but
cheat or chess; that a hair from a horse's tail, kept
for an indefinite time in a tub of rainwater, will
turn into a snake; that however thoroughly a gar-
ter-snake be slain, its tail will not die until after
sunset; that the cat is always prowling around
the cradle in order to get a chance to suck theGOING TO SCHOOL	63

baby's breath; that if you touch a toad, warts will
inevitably appear on your hands, and that these
can be destroyed by various modes of charm and
witchcraft; and that the skull of a raccoon pos-
sesses miraculous curative virtues, such as the
power of removing tumors and cancers.

Dream-books were devoutly believed in by many,
and Fortune-Tellers, whether in the form of
printed books, blind beggars, or wandering gyp-
sies, extracted secret pennies from the pocket of
ignorant wonder.

Not a few persistent superstitions held sway
with the boys on the school playgrounds and in
the woods and fields. A familiar instance is af-
forded by the method to which Tip, though
skeptical, resorted more than once, when in search
of a lost arrow or ball. The seeker for the lost
or undiscovered object spat upon a chip, which
was then flung straight upward, with the magic
injunction:

" Spit, spit, spy!

Don't tell me no lie!

Tell me where that ball is at."

The direction which the falling chip took was
watched with breathless attention, and the vigilant
search in the quarter thus indicated sometimes led
to the finding of the ball. The innumerable times64	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

when the experiment failed were not regarded as
invalidating the magic law.

The Yankee master, though he sometimes let slip
from his educated tongue a down-eastern pro-
vincialism which caused a smile of wonderment to
spread over the faces of his pupils, had frequent
occasion to observe and correct errors which cor-
rupted "the composite speech of the school. Boys
and girls from unbookish families persisted in
solecisms and mispronunciations habitual to them
from childhood and inveterate in their parents,
who had imported into the community from differ-
ent states various and peculiar violations of good
English usage. Some there were who changed
the proper sound of oi, in words like boil, spoil,
roil, into long i, pronouncing them bile, spile, and
rile; and who would speak of testing a liberty
pole, fining the church, and pmting the linger of
scorn. They would say " drop the corn,"
" gether the crap," " rensh the clothes," " feed
the critters," " stuff the sassage," and " take a
cheer and set down." In the words, purse, nurse
curse, and the like, the r-sound was often sup-
pressed, and the words became pus, nus, cus, but
in other cases an r was introduced for euphony,—
wash, for instance, becoming warsh; mush, mursJi;
and wamus, warmm. Many words ending in o or
ow, changed the correct sound of the final syllableGOING TO SCHOOL

65

into er, and such regular forms as tomato, potato,
became tomater, potater; and similarly came into
use: feller, swaMer, shadder, taller, meader, yeller
or yaller, and a long list more. Other survivals,
contractions, elisions, and phonetic modifications,
more or less arbitrary, lent to the utterance of cer-
tain of the country-folk a quaintness such as has
been so delightfully appropriated for homely, hu-
morous, and sometimes pathetic effects, in recent
literature, especially in the felicitous dialect
poems of James Whitcomb Riley. In the Buckeye
State as in the Hoosier State, it was not uncom-
mon to hear an elm called an ellum; a chimney, a
chimbly; and a muskmelon, a mushmillion. A
mean man was contemptuously described by the
epithet or'n'ry, a contraction of ordinary, but of
intenser meaning than the original. The noun
sassafras was corrupted into sassyfax; and the
words asparagus, cucumber, onion, and lilac oc-
casionally gave place to the variants sparrow-
grass or sparrygrass, cowcumber, ing-cm, and
laylock.

Tip holds in memory a few words which, though
not in the dictionary, were in the living language
of his juvenile vocabulary. One of these was the
noun puttydoze or puttydose, perhaps analagous
to the Southern " bulldoze," a name applied to
the children's game of pummeling one another in66	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

a pillow-fight. Another colloquial word which had
currency on the school-grounds of Ridgeville, and
elsewhere, was the verb cooster, meaning to
dawdle or potter around.

"Influenced by such conditions of environment as
have been described or suggested in this and
previous chapters; with such close relation to
nature, whether in the sunshine of open fields
or under the enticing shade of the greenwood;
with such opportunities of education, in school and
out of school, did our Buckeye boy and thousands
of other country lads in southern Ohio begin that
almost unconscious training of body and mind
which was afterwards to bestead them as the
fundamental element in what lecturers before
Teachers' Institutes call the fitting of youth for
the "actual duties of life."VI

WAGON-ROAD AND RAILWAY

A public road ran within a few rods of Tip's
home, making two sharp curves in its course, and
cutting off the Sugar-Camp from the larger area
of the farm. This thoroughfare, ^commonly called
the Big Road, was a main artery along which
streamed such of the world's life as flowed through
that comparatively sequestered region; The gen-
eral direction of travel was from east to west, and
the course chosen by many families migrating to
Indiana, or, later, to Illinois or Iowa, was over the
avenue just mentioned. A favorite spot whereon
movers were apt to camp for the night was a broad
green space at a bend of the road, in the shade
of a group of maples belonging in part to the
sugar-tree grove and in part to Graham's Woods.
In that wayside nook, under spreading boughs,
and upon a grassy carpet, seekers for new for-
tunes would halt and unhitch their tired horses,
perhaps from a large, boat-shaped Conestoga
wagon; would build a camp-fire, cook meals
in kettles swung over a pile of blazing sticks, and
make their beds where the stars shone in their

6768	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

sleeping faces. Often it happened that, in the dusk
of the evening, a messenger would come from one
of these camping families to the nearby farm-
house to request a supply of fresh provisions,—
milk or eggs or bread,—or to solicit lodging for
the old and decrepit, or for sick mothers with
weakly children or perchance new-born babes.
Hundreds of people, old and young, journeyed
along that interminable road, on what seemed to
Tip's imagination a sad and solitary unknown
course, past the quiet farmhouse, on away be-
neath the overhanging trees, " moving out
"West." Not a few returned, looking very mel-
ancholy and homesick, and hurrying as fast as
their weary beasts could haul them and their poor
belongings, back to the log-cabin from which they
had gone forth, with doubtful hope, a year or two
before.

In the period of which we write, most of the
country roads of southern Ohio were for a con-
siderable part of the year unspeakably " hard
roads to travel.'' They were, with few exceptions,
" dirt-roads," properly so called, worn into ruts
and frequent mudholes into which wheels would
sink axle-deep. One of the public ways over
which Tip's father was obliged occasionally to
drive to Minktown, had stretches of the veritable
" corduroy " construction often described in theWAGON-ROAD AND RAILWAY 69

>

annals of backwoods engineering. The yawning
gaps between log and log formed dangerous traps
in which the legs of horses were liable to be
caught and broken. The worst half-mile of the
Minktown corduroy bore the sibilant name " Moss
Crossway." Once a year, according to law, the
property-holders were summoned by the " Super-
visor " to work out their road-tax by plowing and
scooping the thoroughfares into better shape, or
worse, and, perhaps, by hauling a few loads of
creek gravel to dump into the worst chuck-holes.
In winter the average road was at best barely
tolerable, but in summer time, despite the dust,
many of the carriage ways were ways of pleas-
antness.

Such " dirt-roads " as we have described were,
in winter, the wagoner's dread; but he rejoiced
that a few excellent macadamized highways had
been constructed for the public benefit. The Old
National Pike and its branches in Ohio, as in
Pennsylvania, were specimens of solid and mas-
sive construction, which still suggest to the trav-
eler a certain Roman durability. Portions of this
famous road ran within a few miles of Rose
Cottage. The pike from Cincinnati to Columbus,
passing through Warren County, was and is a
smooth, broad, and well-kept avenue. Charles
Dickens on his first tour through the West in 1840,70	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

availed himself of this turnpike, which he re-
garded as a " rare blessing.'' Writing in '' Amer-
ican Notes " of his departure from the Queen
City for Columbus, the novelist said: " We start
at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail
coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and
plethoric that it appears to be troubled with a
tendency of blood to the head. Dropsical it cer-
tainly is, for it will hold a dozen persons inside.
But it is very clean and bright, and rattles through
the streets of Cincinnati gayly."

The mail-coach continued to be the main public
conveyance for travelers long after its swift
rival, the railroad-car, had begun its career of
triumph. To the curious crowd of barefooted
boys who made many flying visits from the school-
house in the corner of Eiley's Woods to the ham-
let of Ridgeville, it was always an exciting event
to see the stage come, and stop, and go. Villagers
watched the approaching vehicle from afar, and
never failed to cheer when the expert driver of
four or six fine horses drew up near the post-
office long enough to throw off the mail-bag, after
which he cracked his long whip, and hurried on
with his equipage to the tavern, where a relay of
fresh steeds, already harnessed, stood waiting
to be hitched up. While Zeke Mulford, the post-
master, made slow haste to " change the mail, "WAGON-ROAD AND RAILWAY 71

a duty which he discharged with a gravity becom-
ing his great function as an officer of the Federal
Government, the gentlemen passengers usually
got out of the coach to " stretch their legs," a
healthful exercise always taken inside the bar-
room; while the ladies would stretch their fair
necks out at the side doors of the coach and give
the boys a chance to see whether their faces and
bonnets were pretty or otherwise. On a memora-
ble occasion one of these lady tourists, a beautiful
madam with a foreign air and a lovely smile,
handed Tip a fine rose, which surprising and
gracious compliment made him too conscious of
his bare feet and torn cap. He was much in love
with the lady for many months,—years, in fact,—
and is not sure that his passion for her is yet
altogether extinguished.

Steam had scarcely reached Ohio when Tip's
father surveyed his uncleared acres near the Mi-
ami, and built his first house-and-home. The loco-
motive engine was a newcomer and an object of
wonder. The Little Miami Railroad was not com-
pleted from Cincinnati to Xenia until 1845.
When it was advertised that a through passenger
train would make its trial trip from the Queen
City, Tip's parents, taking their children along
with them, drove from the farmhouse to the sta-
tion of Corwin, now East Waynesville, to see the72	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

" Iron Horse," or, as many country people called
it, the " Bullgine." There was much disparaging
talk among the farmers concerning the impracti-
cability of what was already in successful opera-
tion, and many solemn protests were made against
the murderous proceedings of the "cow-catcher."
—Tip was a lad of nine, and his sensations on
beholding the " Bullgine " come shrieking and
puffing along the flat-rail track to the station were
made up of astonishment, admiration, and a touch
of terror. The engine was stopped long enough
to take on wood and water, and to give the gath-
ered throng of spectators a chance to excite, if
not to gratify, curiosity. After much tooting of
the steam whistle and ringing of the signal bell,
by the ostentatious fireman, and after many cries
of " All aboard! " by the bustling conductor, one
resolute countryman, with the air of a hero risk-
ing limb and life for the sake of novel and des-
perate adventure, boldly stepped upon the plat-
form of the single passenger-car, and the train
rolled away toward Xenia, seeming very proud of
the noise and smoke it made. Tip was sorry that
the passing show was so brief, and he went home
practicing the difficult vocal art of imitating the
ch', ch', ch', of the steam escape, and the yell of
the locomotive whistle.vn

DOWN TO CINCINNATI

In the period to which these pages chiefly re-
late, the farmer of the neighborhood we have de-
scribed seldom undertook a long journey, but when
his affairs required him to make a trip to the
metropolis of the Ohio Valley, the route which he
took was, naturally, the turnpike,—an excellent
highway leading to the Queen City from Dayton.
His tourist-car was not an automobile, but a stout
vehicle built by the village wagon-maker, aided by
the blacksmith; his locomotive was a pair of trusty
horses. Often he carried a valuable load of farm
produce to be disposed of in the " Fly Market,"
on Pearl Street, and, on his return, brought a
" back-load " of dry-goods in boxes and queens-
ware in crates, for some village merchant who
depended upon this means of transportation. Go-
ing down to Cincinnati was thus a source of profit
and a means of diversion. The round trip, in-
cluding a stop-over of a day or so in the City, con-
sumed the best part of a week.—Will the gracious
reader, in imagination, make one of a party on an
excursion to Cincinnati, which Tip enjoyed, in

7374	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

company with his father, about the year eighteen
hundred and forty-six?

We start from the farm early in the morning,
while the breath of the dewy cornfields is yet
sweetly rich upon the air. Our traveling convey-
ance is a typical farm-wagon, stoutly made, and
painted red. Tip has helped to put the six oaken
bows into the staples of the deep wagon-bed, and to
stretch the white canvas cover tight and smooth,
tying it down with stout twine in many places,
and drawing it firmly with a shirr-rope behind.
To sit snugly under this curved canopy is like
camping in a moving tent. The feed-box pro-
jects at the rear of the wagon, and under this
swings the tar-bucket. A broad board serves as
a seat, and the home-made quilts used as cushions
may be utilized as bedding,—for it is customary,
on such outings, to bunk occasionally in the wagon.

After bidding good-by to the home folks, and
promising to take good care of ourselves, we climb
into our arch-roofed vehicle, and are soon upon
the westering highway described in the preceding
chapter. This road intersects the Dayton and
Cincinnati turnpike at Ridgeville, a small hamlet
some seven miles north of Lebanon. We halt our
team in front of the village tavern, that the horses
may refresh themselves by dipping their noses
into the brimming trough that is frequently re-DOWN TO CINCINNATI	75

plenished by streams from the spout of a big
wooden pump to which, a long iron dipper is fas-
tened by a small chain.

Though our boy is impatient to resume the jour-
ney, every inch of which is a pleasant excitement
to his eager mind, the associations of the village
tavern must detain us a little longer, especially
as the loquacious landlord has much to relate of
the sayings and doings of noted men who have
slept in his beds or taken meals at his table, or,
at least, have stood treat at the bar. Henry Clay
and Thomas Corwin and many another political
orator have stopped here. Many a liberty-pole
has been raised in front of the old hostelry; many
a squad of militia, armed with cornstalks, has
filed by on muster-day. Often has the Fourth of
July been celebrated in the grove across the road,
with a rub-a-dub of drums, squeak of fifes, flutter
of flags, and flight of spread-eagle eloquence.

Resuming our journey, we drive away south-
ward, going very slowly, for the wagon is heavily
loaded. We pass through a ridiculously little town
bearing the absurdly great name of " Pekin,"
and through another small place called Merrits-
town, where there is a factory for the making of
earthenware, and here Tip gets out of the wagon
in order that he may enter the long, low brick
building and witness the skill of workmen manip-76	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ulating the plastic clay upon the potter's wheel,
and observe the process of glazing crocks and jars.
After having spent half an hour admiring the
mysteries of the potter's trade, the boy climbs
again to his seat in the wagon, and we continue
our leisurely course, presently passing on our left
the lake-like " Reservoir " which feeds the Canal,
and soon thereafter arriving at the pretty village
of Lebanon, the county seat of Warren County.

Not far from Lebanon, and near the banks of
Turtle Creek, we draw up in front of a wayside
tavern called the Indian Queen. Its swinging sign-
board shows the tawny features of an aboriginal
princess, her crown an immense bunch of many-
colored feathers. After watering our horses at
the well of the Indian Queen, we proceed to an-
other travelers' rest, the Lowe Tavern, a little
northward from the village of Palmyra or Mason.
Two miles farther on, we reach still another and
much more famous public house, the Bates Tav-
ern, where we will stop for dinner. The inn is
celebrated not only on account of its excellent
table and clean beds, but even more because of
the reputation of the host for his complete mas-
tery of the theory and practice of profanity.—
No other man on the pike could rival Bates as an
eloquent and artistic dispenser of wicked words.
To say that he swore " a blue streak " were toDOWN TO CINCINNATI	77

speak feebly. He cursed in all colors of language.
Nevertheless, his customers, though they might
deplore his one shocking vice, condoned it for the
reason that he was a man of unimpeached honor,
a good and generous citizen, and a peerless ca-
terer. Many a traveler on horseback or in car-
riage sought his establishment, which was a wel-
come harbor alike for man and beast. Horses
fared sumptuously in the ample stables. The
wagon-yard was extensive, " sweet as a nut," and
well protected by a high fence and by securely
locked gates. The farmer's wagon, however rich
its lading, was insured agaiilst all thieves and
depredators so long as it remained in the custody
of Boniface Bates.

Our next stopping is at the hamlet of Pisgah,
which recalls to Tip's memory the Bible narrative
of Moses spying out the land of Canaan. The
fifth stage of the cityward journey brings us to
Sharonville, another Scriptural denomination,
and the principal tavern in the village exhibits
upon its high sign-board the picture of a noble
steed with flying mane and flowing tail, which
gives the inn its name,'' The White Horse.'' The
town of Beading offers the passer-by bed and
board, with accommodation for a caravan of vehi-
cles, under the roofs of the Mills House. Our next
stopping place announces itself to the eye by the78	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

matter-of-fact but significant name, " The Four
Mile House." Having passed this suburban hos-
telry, we who are young, and always on the height
of Mount Pisgah, begin to thrill with lively an-
ticipation. Only four miles, now, from the City!
The steeples will soon come within sight! A feel-
ing of awe and vague wonder stirs in the bosom.
This gives place to a transitory sensation of
horror, when our wagon comes opposite the
marked spot where stood the gallows-tree upon
which were hanged Cowan and Hoover, two no-
torious murderers. " A part of the scaffold may
be seen yet, I am told," says our driver. " If you
wish to get out and walk across the hill, you may
see for yourself." Tip has no desire to look upon
the place of execution;—quite the contrary. He
has no eyes for anything except the promised
emporium. The devouring forward look carries
all his thoughts and feelings forward. At last the
fair metropolis comes into full view!—With un-
expected suddenness we behold it from suburban
uplands !—behold its checkered streets, its black
roofs, its gleaming spires, seen indistinctly
through a thin cloud of smoke. The long curve
of the shining river, the far hills of Kentucky,
the nearer flanking valleys of Deer Creek and Mill
Creek, appear in vivid, bird's-eye picture!—The
Queen City, then, is at last a realized hope, anDOWN TO CINCINNATI	79

actual certitude, not merely a country lad's shad-
owy dream.—Slowly we descend the long incline of
hill, and we are conscious of being within the cor-
porate limits. There is one more tavern at which
every farmer's wagon is expected to halt, a guest-
house belonging geographically to the town, yet
preserving a bucolic character notwithstanding
its unrural name, " The Saint George,"—a fa-
mous inn, over the door of which a very large
sign-board displays, in life size, the chivalrous
Saint mounted on his mailed war-horse, slaying
the dragon with a mighty spear.

We drive down Vine Street to Fourth, east on
Fourth to Broadway, down the steep grade of
stylish Broadway to the vicinity of the " Fly Mar-
ket," a long, wooden structure situated only a
square or so from the renowned and fashionable
" Spencer House." The wagon and horses are
intrusted to safe-keeping in a livery-stable, and
we, bewildered pilgrims from a far country, are
now foot-loose, and free to explore the metropolis
and to enjoy its novel sights.

The noise and bustle of traffic upon the wide,
steep landing of Water Street, the majestic sweep
of the broad Ohio flowing between its hilly shores,
and especially the imposing appearance of the
numerous, magnificent steamboats which line the
wharf, looking like pleasure-palaces afloat, made80	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

a powerful impression on a country boy of Tip's
imagination! To go on board of some gay New
Orleans packet, the Columbus, the Joan of Arc,
the Chieftain, or the Splendid; to view the en-
gines in the hold, to walk through the carpeted
cabin, stretching away like a fairy street from
the captain's office to the ladies' parlor in the
distance, to climb the narrow stairway over the
wheel-house to the hurricane deck, and on up to
the giddy height of the pilot-house, with its won-
derful wheel,—this was an experience which
caused the heart to beat double time, and loaded
the tongue with a whole volume to tell at home.

Tip's father, always deeply interested in public
institutions and in architecture, guided the way
through the city to the principal hotels, to the
courthouse, and to the churches, not omitting the
Synagogues. He took particular pleasure in
pointing out " Trollope's Folly," the Mechanics'
Institute, Woodward College, St. Xavier's Col-
lege, and the beautiful Cathedral of St. Peter,
with its Grecian columns; and, though not a Cath-
olic, he paid his respects to Bishop Purcell.

Nor did the cosmopolitan spirit of that most
liberal of parents deprive the boy of urban experi-
ences less conventional. When nightfall shrouded
the town in tempting mystery, he conducted his
grateful charge, in the glare of street-lamps, toDOWN TO CINCINNATI	81

bazaars and auction rooms, to surprise the lad's
childish curiosity with sights and sounds the like
of which the farm never saw or heard.—But the
opportunity which, in common with thousands of
country boys, Tip could least think of foregoing,
was that of visiting Monsieur J. Dorfeuille's
Western Museum, of which he had heard many a
wonderful tale. This famous museum was located
somewhere on lower Main Street, in a three-story
brick building. Among its countless curiosities
you might see a " Beautiful Moss-Covered Foun-
tain," a " Phaenakistoscope," the " Enormous
Elk," and a " Real Mermaid." You might feast
your eyes on Indian clubs and calumets; toma-
hawks and bows; ponderous bones of the Mam-
moth; the bludgeon which killed Captain Cook; a
bunch of rusty keys from Cave-in-the-Rock (a
robber's den in southern Illinois); fragments of
the exploded boiler of the steamer Moselle; and
dazzling pictures of Asiatic temples and of Cir-
cassian girls, seen through magnifying lenses fixed
in the wall. Exceedingly wonderful, in the boy's
artless vision, were the wax figures, single and in
groups, portraying notable or notorious char-
acters. There stood Aaron Burr in the act of
firing his pistol at Alexander Hamilton, and there
lay George Washington on his deathbed. In the
next booth reclined the Sleeping Beauty in all82	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

her loveliness, the Prince bending over her, medi-
tating the awakening kiss. To relieve this pleas-
ing scene, one need but look on a harrowing
tableau showing Cowan in the act of murdering
his wife with an ax, while his children, already
slain, lie weltering on the bloody floor. From this
tragedy the morbid spectator inevitably turned to
enter the Chamber of Horrors, in which, amongst
other ghastly and revolting objects, was exhibited
the head of Hoover, the murderer, a dreadful
relic preserved in an enormous jar of alcohol.

Yet even the Chamber of Horrors was outdone,
in some respects, by the ingenious assemblage of
diabolic scenes and figures on exhibition in the top
story of the museum, where late every evening
Monsieur Dorfeuille unlocked to his patrons the
half-tef rifying, half-grotesque, moving machinery
of what was advertised as the " Infernal Re-
gions. '' This original contrivance of waxwork and
scenic painting was the joint invention of the
sculptor, Hiram Powers, and a French artist
named Hervieu. It was a composite study sug-
gested by Dante's Inferno and Milton's Hell.
Within the murky confines of Hades were shown
brimstone lakes of fire, and mountains of ice, walk-
ing skeletons, imps with flaming eyes, and black
devils tormenting damned souls. Though Tip,
forewarned, had fortified his will against the dan-DOWN TO CINCINNATI	83

ger of being taken unawares by any frightful
make-believe in that doleful empire, he could not
escape the spasm of alarm which shook his nerv-
ous system when the waxen similitude of Sin,
which sat by the Stygian gate, suddenly sprang-
towards him with a Miltonian horrid cry.

Another startling feature of the " Infernal
Regions '' was a mysterious contrivance by which
a strong electric shock was conveyed to the unwary
visitor who chanced to draw the current by step-
ping upon certain deceptive plates of iron and
touching the metallic grating through which the
show was seen.

The coarse extravagance of the exhibition,
though revolting to taste, was redeemed by broad
humor which everybody could enjoy. His Satanic
Majesty was represented as a decidedly good-
natured, small-horned, fork-tailed, cloven-footed
old gentleman in red tights, who politely welcomed
all his auditors to his fiery kingdom, saying he
was glad to see so many fine people in that hot
place. Old Nick's comical pranks and his jocular
remarks, replete with local " gags," were in-
variably greeted with peals of laughter which
echoed merrily through the realm of endless woe.

The Western Museum was certainly more won-
derful than Tip had anticipated, and its marvels
helped to sustain his illusion that the City was a84	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

strange, unreal world altogether unlike the coun-
try. His glamored imagination confused the liv-
ing men and women swarming the streets, with the
life-like wax figures assembled in the show-rooms
of the edifice where Monsieur Dorfeuille and the
fat and talkative Frenchwoman who sat at the
foot of the lower stairway to take tickets, seemed
as much a part of the mechanism of the place as
were the gibbering fiends and the moving skele-
tons in the shades above, or the peculiar, big hand-
organ just within the entrance, the unearthly but
by no means heavenly music of which haunted and
long continued to haunt his ears like a ghost of
lugubrious sound.

The evening spent at Dorfeuille's, Tip regarded
as the most exciting he had ever passed; but it was
discounted by the next night's more passionate and
more dignified sensation; for, on that memorable
second night, the lad's father, dear comrade, took
him to the old National Theater, on the east side of
Sycamore Street, between Third and Fourth. As
was customary, a double-bill was presented, the
opening drama being John Howard Payne's trag-
edy entitled " Brutus: or the Fall of Tarquin."
No language can convey an adequate idea of the
effect of the representation of this stage-play,
upon Tip. It was the first time he had been inside
of a theater. He remembers not who played theDOWN TO CINCINNATI	85

part of Brutus, or that of Titus, the ill-fated son
whom it was the father's patriotic duty to con-
demn to death. Sire and son may have been very
poor actors; but in the boy's estimation they were
not actors,—they seemed real men, doing their
fatal and affecting parts then and there, for the
first and last and only time. The final act of the
tragedy almost took away Tip's breath. He will
as soon forget the sun, moon, and stars, as cease
to remember the pathetic closing scene—Brutus
on the tribunal, Titus brought in by the lictors,
the condemnation, the embrace of father and son,
the final doom from the lips of Brutus after he
reascends the tribunal:

'' To death! "When you do reach the spot,
My hand shall wave your signal for the act,

Then let the trumpet's sound proclaim it done! "

Tip's heart stopped beating, to listen for that
trumpet's signal. The awful note was sounded.
Brutus, garbed in his toga, standing like a statue,
speaks on:

" Justice now
Demands her victim! A little moment,

And I am childless. One effort, and 'tis past!—
Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free! "

The oaks in the Big Woods, if they are yet
standing, may testify to the many times a declaim-86	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ing voice repeated to their solemn audience, that
closing line:

" Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free! "

The after-piece, that evening, on the stage of the
National Theater, was a farce turning upon the
ludicrous experiences of a youth, who, until after
he reached the age of twenty-one, had never seen
or heard of a woman. It was very amusing, and
Tip laughed with the whole audience; but through
its merry notes he continued to hear the Roman
father's words:

" Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free! "

The sojourn in Cincinnati is over. The ex-
cursionists are on the Lebanon pike, homeward
bound. Their farm produce has been sold in the
" Fly-Market." A back-load of dry-goods, crock-
ery, and hardware, consigned perhaps to Boake
& Hardy or to L. M. Hadden, has been snugly
packed into the wagon-bed. Now the wayside inns
have lost their alluring charm to those who have
been " down to Cincinnati," and must suffer the
reaction of a return to tamer scenes. Exhausted
by unwonted strain, the travelers talk little and
meditate much. Strange, the homesick mood
which suddenly comes over the weary boy.—At
last, from a rise in the road, his drowsy eyes catchDOWN TO CINCINNATI	87

a view of the sleepy hamlet of Ridgeville,—the
tavern, the blacksmith shop, the tin fish swimming
on the spire of the new Universalist Church. Yon-
der on the by-road is Riley's Woods, looking
oddly unfamiliar;—and can that low building be
the schoolhouse ? Yes: half an hour's drive will
bring the wanderers home.

With dull rumble, as if complaining of the tedi-
ous length of road they have been compelled to
measure, the wheels toil on, bearing the wagon and
its passengers past Eiley's Woods, past the " ad-
vertising tree " at the cross-roads, past Lackey's
meadow and Staley's cooper-shop, past the green
and shady ground where the westward movers
used to camp for the night and build their gypsy-
fires, turning the corner where the road curves to
skirt the well-known Sugar-Camp,—and when this
bend is rounded, the horses, forgetting their fa-
tigue, quicken their pace without admonition from
whip or lashing lines, and soon reach the open gate
through which they pass into the homeward-lead-
ing lane! Now comes bounding from his cozy ken-
nel old Bull, the house-dog, and with joyful bark-
ing leaps and circles around the wagon. From
the garden is wafted a faint, mingled perfume of
domestic herbs and friendly flowers, and Tip,
leaning forward to inhale a fuller breath of the
fragrant air, utters a half-involuntary glad cry as88	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

he recognizes, where they stand in a waiting and
expectant group on the vine-clad porch of Rose
Cottage, his mother and sisters, waving a salute
to the fortunate loved ones returned to them
safely from untold adventures in the Queen City.vm

BEING A FARMER-BOY

Nature is the sovereign schoolmistress: she
teaches every science; incites to endless investiga-
tion; half discloses the mystery of Life in myriad
forms of use and of beauty. She is the prompter
of thought and inquiry, the mother of emotion, the
nurse of imagination, the inspiration of religion
and poetry. Therefore the inestimable value of
the experience which may be gained from that inti-
mate knowledge of natural objects and processes
acquired by the actual observation of, and par-
ticipation in, the various operations of a farmer's
life. He whose tasks and whose recreations bring
him into daily and hourly contact with earth and
sky in their thousand aspects, must learn much
of the elemental laws of being. He is very near to
the secrets of God; he drinks at the fountain-
heads of knowledge; and, with faculties quickened
to interpret every phenomenon and whispered hint
of nature, he

" Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

8990	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

To him the changing year is a perpetual revela-
tion, yet .an inscrutable wonder. He follows the
seasons in their annual procession, from the time
of the first piping of the bluebird ere the March.-
rime blossoms under the drift of dead leaves in the
woods, through the months of plowing and plant-
ing, through the months of harvest and fruit-
gathering, to the time of the withered bough and
of the stealthy snow and benumbing ice. He is
brought into familiar acquaintance with cause and
effect, succession of phenomena, generation, birth,
growth, decay, and death; with struggle and suc-
cess, surrender and failure, evolution and survival.

In this school of nature, disciplined by the les-
sons taught by work and play in an agricultural
community, our Buckeye boy was brought up.
Even as one unconsciously acquires the language
and usages of the land of his nativity, so Tip, born
in the country, grew into the habitudes of those
around him, learning

'' To plow and to sow, to reap and to mow,
And be a farmer-boy."

Like most country lads he inherited the obligation
(more or less shirked as a matter of self-preserva-
tion) to do innumerable chores, to weed the gar-
den, hunt the eggs, bring in firewood, carry water
to the hands in the field, drop corn, gatherBEING A FARMER-BOY	91

sheaves, stow away hay in the mow, drive the
cows home from pasture, and assist in a hundred
minor tasks demanded by the exacting economics
of the farm. Tip can hardly recall a period of
his life in which he was too young to help " gear
up " horses and assist in hitching them to the
wagon, the sled, or the plow. As he grew older
and stronger, of course he attempted heavier
labor, often receiving aid and counsel from his
brother John, who was his model and guide in all
exercises requiring strength and skill. From the
subserviency of a mere doer of chores, who had to
run at the bidding of anybody and everybody, he
gradually worked upward to the rank of a " half-
hand," sharing in the set and regular tasks of
adults, hoeing his one row to his brother's two
or three, or, in the season of harvesting the corn,
following the wagon and husking out the ears of
the " down row," while on either side of the
wagon a grown-up man, with nimble husking-peg
and athletic wrists, stripped the rustling shucks
from the golden wealth of twice as many upright
stalks. Whenever, in this competitive business of
husking corn, a red ear was disclosed, the for-
tunate finder held it aloft and shouted, " Good
luck! "

To be a " half-hand '' carried with it some privi-
leges and some exemptions; but upon the whole92	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

it was harder than to be a choreboy, because it
entailed regularity and a degree of responsibility,
things repugnant to boyhood, which, being a nat-
ural and savage state, takes

'' no hint of duty
From all the glad blue of heaven! "

Tip keenly enjoyed many kinds of work on the
farm, but he liked idleness better, and never did
the delight of toil, in seedtime or in harvest,
prevent his hearing the welcome " Hoo-hoo! " of
a home-calling voice, or the mellow toot of the
dinner-horn, which summoned him from the indus-
trious field.

"When the boy had developed sufficient muscle to
engage in such hard labor, he took peculiar pleas-
ure in guiding the plow, especially in the process
of " breaking up " a piece of fallow land. Em-
phatically this driving the " team afield," this
furrowing of the " stubborn glebe," gave him a
sense of mastery, a feeling of conquest and sov-
ereignty, over the soil. The sound of the plow-
share cutting through the fertile black loam and
the motion of the curling furrow as it rolled
evenly from the smooth moldboard; the whole-
some, primeval smell of pregnant earth; the in-
finite disclosure of virtues and vitalities which
had lain hidden until now upturned to the lightBEING A FARMER-BOY	93

of the sun and the inspection of vigilant birds,—
these engaged his five senses and kept his mind
continually on the alert. Nor was he less alive
to impressions of a more sentimental character.
The selfsame experiences that the poet Burns im-
mortalized in the spontaneous lyric, " To a Moun-
tain Daisy," were of frequent recurrence to him,
if, instead of a mountain-daisy, a spring-beauty
or a violet be substituted. How often when, from
the destruction which the " cruel coulter " had
wrought upon its " wee bit housie," a field-mouse
fled away in " panic," did the boy, touched to the
heart by such catastrophe, recall to mind the com-
passionate words of the Ayrshire poet,

" I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle! "

For there, in a leather sheath on the plowbeam,
was the " murd'ring pattle," ready at hand for
other than its intended use, which was only to
clean the moldboard.

The season for harvesting the cereal grains,
wheat, barley, oats, and rye, overwhelmed the
husbandman with urgent labors, most of which
were far from agreeable to the boys.—"Push your
work or your work will push you! "—Slowly and
toilsomely, by means of the old-fashioned cradle,
swath after swath, the ripened fields were shorn,94	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

then raked into sheaves and bound. The com-
paratively easy task of gathering the sheaves fell
to the boys, who derived from it as much amuse-
ment as was compatible with the conscious doing
of work. Once upon a time, when Tip and an-
other lad had haled together the dozen sheaves
requisite for a regulation " shock," they be-
thought themselves of the story of Joseph and
the dream that he had dreamed: "Behold, we
were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf
arose and also stood upright; and, behold, your
sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance
to my sheaf." Making application of this
Scripture, the boys dramatically set one big sheaf
firmly upright and ranged the other eleven in a
circle around it, all bowing toward the king sheaf
in the center. Then arose a friendly altercation
between the boys as to which one of them should
represent Joseph, and which his brethren, Tip
finally persuading his playfellow to assume the
collective part of the brethren.

Though the threshing-machine was coming rap-
idly into use among Ohio farmers, the immemo-
rial method of separating the grain from the straw
by "tramping out," was still generally prac-
ticed. A double row of sheaves was placed upon
the barn floor, in a circle resembling a small circus-
ring, and then two, four, or six horses were drivenBEING A FARMER-BOY	95

round and round upon this course until their
trampling hoofs had beaten the grain from the
straw. After the straw had been removed, the
fan-mill was employed to winnow away the chaff.
This primitive mode of threshing again recalled
the Old Testament: '' Muzzle not the ox that
treadeth out the corn." Not less ancient of origin
was the surviving process of " tribulation," by
which the flail, skillfully wielded, beat the good
grain from its chaffy coatings and encumbering
stalks.

Bread being the staff of life, every provident
farmer of the neighborhood had frequent occa-
sion to drive to one of the grist-mills on the Miami,
—usually Hinchman's Mill, near Oregonia, and
not very far from Fort Ancient,—taking sacks
of wheat, corn, rye, or buckwheat, to be ground,
or exchanged for proportional return of flour or
meal.

Relying thus upon the miller for the sweet, fresh
foodstuffs which the housewives transmuted into
loaves, corn-pone, Indian-pudding, and buck-
wheat-cakes, the farmer depended no less upon
the blacksmith for the far different service of
making and mending various agricultural imple-
ments. The country smithy is an institution
which appears much the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever. Vulcan seems a stubborn conserva-96	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

tive. Yet some changes do occasionally invade his
sooty domain. The old forge in the village where
our farmer-boy heard the '' heaving bellows
blow,'' and watched the sparks fly '' like chaff
from a threshing floor," was a typical one.
Thither the youngster was often sent from the
farm to have a horse shod, a plowshare sharpened,
a broken clevis or trace-chain rewelded; or to
have the tire of a wagon-wheel " cut," and reset
around the smoking felloe. This observation of
the behavior of iron under the persuasive force of
fire and hammer, went into Tip's education. So
also did his inspection of the honest, old-fash-
ioned, creative work which was carried on in the
wagon-making establishment that stood just
across the road, opposite the blacksmith-shop.
There the wagon-maker, who was, moreover, a
wheelwright, actually made wagons, not by ma-
chinery but by hand, with such simple tools as
are usually contained in a carpenter's-chest.

The mechanic arts as practiced in the country
sixty years ago, were, of course, not nearly so
much specialized as they now are. In those com-
paratively primitive days one man learned to do
several different kinds of technical work. Almost
of necessity the average farmer strove to become,
if not a master-mechanic, at least a Jack-of-all-
trades. He was, in a fashion, his own archi-BEING A FARMER-BOY	97

tect, stone-mason, carpenter, blacksmith, cobbler,
tinker, and clock-mender. There was on the prem-
ises of Tip's grandmother a convenient structure
called the Shop, in which were to be found a
forge, a turning-lathe, and a carpenter's-bench
supplied with' a great variety of tools and ap-
pliances.

The stores which were maintained in the village
for the accommodation of a rural neighborhood in
ante-railroad days, were somewhat different from
those now to be seen in country towns, and were
of much local importance. Country folks did not
think of going directly to the city to purchase
goods for themselves, much less of having orders
filled by express or through the mail. Retail deal-
ers kept on hand quite a large stock of those arti-
cles most needed by the average family, in the
line of dry-goods, hats and caps, boots and shoes,
hardware, queensware, groceries, and 11 notions."
Commerce endeavored to bring the necessaries of
life within the reach of the poorest. Sugar and
tea, needles and calico, were paid for in butter at
ten cents a pound, and eggs at six cents a dozen,
or in other salable commodities brought directly
from the farm.

Eggs and butter, feathers and wool, hides and
tallow, beef and pork,—these are a few of the
staple products the mere mention whereof sug-98	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

gests how much of pastoral prosperity is derived
from domestic animals, which, having enriched
their owners with a various tribute supplied from
their living bodies, are finally sacrificed, on the
shambles, for man's benefit. Something more
than pitiable in the fate of those dumb creatures
appealed to our boy, whose nerves, though not
supersensitive, were at least sufficiently alive to
painful impressions. He was made grievously
unhappy, for example, by what seemed to him the
merciless slaughter of swine, a repulsive tribe
bred and fattened only to be struck dead by an
iron mallet, then carved into hams, shoulders, and
side-meat, for the table. Neighbor meeting neigh-
bor, when the season of whetted blades and of the
sausage-machine came on, would ask, " When do
you butcher? " or, " Wish you would come over,
Thursday, and help us kill hogs." Memory re-
volts from recalling the sickening horror of the
dreadful Day, the squealing of the doomed vic-
tims, the foul odors of blood and death, the fetid
steam which rose from the black kettles in which,
to loosen their bristles from the hide, the newly
slain brutes were scalded, the long gibbet upon
which their white carcasses, each hung by a gam-
brel, froze in the cold, clear moonlight. All these
details were distressing to contemplate, yet their
repulsiveness deterred no one from partaking ofBEING A FARMER-BOY	99

a delicate spare-rib or a morsel of well-seasoned
tenderloin.

The plucking of live geese and ducks, though it
appeared woefully to hurt the hissing or quack-
ing fowl, did not seem to awaken much remorse
in the gossiping dames,—it was women's work,—
who made a kind of frolic out of this feathery
robbery. Families must have beds and pillows.

Almost every farmer pastured a flock of sheep,
which supplied a quantity of wool that was usually
carded in a local factory and returned in the form
of spin-rolls to the housewives, who with their
humming wheels twisted it into yarn, ready for
the knitting-needle or the loom.

The processes of sheep-washing and sheep-
shearing, as Tip observed them in his childhood,
differed in no wise from the modes described in
Thomson's " Seasons," which pastoral record of
the " rolling year " was the first book of verse
that the boy chanced to read. He recollects going
along with his father, his brother John, and his
uncle Joe,- when they " urged to the giddy
brink " of Clearcreek a bleating flock, compelling
"the soft fearful people" to "commit their
woolly sides " to the stream; recollects how, after
the " well-washed fleece had drank the flood," and
the sheep were driven home, their snow-white cov-
erings were " borrowed " by the " tender swain's100	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

well-guided shears." But lie remembers, also, a
far different picture,—a pathetic and harrowing
sight the scene of which was a pasture field on
his father's estate. Sheep-killing dogs, with a
wolfish instinct for blood and havoc, had there, by
night, assailed the helpless, innocent flock, chasing
down, in sheer savage sport, one after another of
their panic-stricken victims, not to feast upon the
slaughtered prey, but only to sink sharp white
teeth into bleeding throats. Here lay a sturdy
ram, his twisted horns low sunk in the weedy
grass; there, stained with her own blood, a hap-
less ewe, that seemed to have died trying to save
her lamb, which lay dead and mutilated by her
side. It was indeed a ghastly and mournful spec-
tacle, never to be forgotten. Following the lead
of his father's footsteps from place to place,
searching the field over to count the losses sus-
tained by the flock, and followed timidly by the
few sheep which the dogs had spared, the boy felt
his heart swell with natural grief, and is it any
shame to him that tears ran down his cheeks ?IX

COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS

When one learns how to talk, to count, to read,
and to write, lie possesses the fundamentals of a
sound education; and these fundamentals were
very well taught in the humble academy erected
near Ridgeville, in a corner of Riley's Woods, in
the year 1846. There was something staid, rigor-
ous, and puritanic in the prim severity of the
architecture of this building, with its right angles,
its close-shuttered windows, its narrow chimney,
and its low-capped double door, which looked to
Tip's child-imagination like the scriptural strait
gate about which he heard and read rather too
much in his juvenile days. But the edifice was
new and clean, and if the interior seemed com-
fortless and somewhat jail-like, those who suf-
fered temporary imprisonment within its walls
were consoled by the knowledge that Paradise lay
just outside, and that their school-yard included,
in a sense, the wildwoods, the open fields, and all
the roads, lanes, and byways of the district.

The school-room was divided into two sections,
by a wide aisle running from the door to the

101102	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

teacher's desk, the " girls' side " being on the
east, and the " boys' side " opposite. In the win-
ter season, an immense " ten-plate " stove, con-
suming vast quantities of firewood, occupied a
space midway up this aisle. Each half of the
floor surface was furnished with two rows of
strong, heavy, double desks of hard poplar,
painted a leaden hue. These desks had sloping
lids, opening on stout hinges, and were provided
with locks, the keys to which the careless school-
children speedily lost.

The kit of educational tools with which, in the
eighteen-forties, a fully equipped " scholar " in
his early teens was furnished, included not only
the indispensable slate, with its " green spot,"
and a supply of carefully chosen slate-pencils, but
also a few text-books, necessarily a Speller, a
Eeader, and an Arithmetic.

Much attention was paid to the art of penman-
ship, and every pupil's desk treasured a copy-
book, a goose-quill pen, and a bottle of ink, which
fluid was either bought from the village store or
manufactured at home out of such materials as
nut-galls or oak-bark ooze and copperas, mixed in
a thin solution of gum. Many of the pupils were
provided with a sifter of blotting-sand, and a few
could boast of a pounce-box, from which was
sprinkled a white powder used to prevent blottingCOUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 103

in rewriting over erasures. Steel pens were com-
ing into fashion, but one of these, of good quality,
cost as much as twenty-five cents, and therefore
the classic feather for a long time continued to
be the instrument with which wavering " straight
lines " and " pot-hooks " were traced, capital
stems and flourishes wrought, and faultless
graphic beauty achieved in such inscriptions as,

" Many men of many minds,

Many birds of many kinds;

Many fish swim in the sea,

Many men can/not agree."

The copy-book was made by folding together sev-
eral sheets of foolscap, cutting the same into leaves
of the proper shape, and stitching the latter be-
tween improvised covers of brown paper. Often
it was necessary to rule the pages, the required
lines being drawn with a pencil of bar-lead such
as was commonly used in running bullets, and
which was for sale at all country stores. Plumbago
had been employed in the manufacture of tiny
pencil-points, which, before using, had to be fitted
to a metallic holder, but the modern " lead-
pencil," inclosing the graphite in a wooden casing,
if invented, was not yet in general use.

The School Readers first employed in the new
schoolhouse were chiefly a series prepared by104 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

Charles W. Sanders, a popular text-book maker
of the period. " Sanders' Readers " gave place
to a series compiled by Lyman Cobb, and these,
in turn, were superseded by " McGuffey's Eclectic
Series." The first text-book in Geography which
Tip remembers having studied, was an interesting
octavo prepared by J. Olney. This book, with
its accompanying Atlas, was succeeded by a school
geography designed and edited by Ormsby M.
Mitchel, the celebrated Ohio astronomer. One en-
terprising Ridgeville teacher organized a class
in Civil Government, using as a text-book a '' Po-
litical Grammar " written by Edward D. Mans-
field, of Cincinnati. In the natural progress of
educational affairs new studies were introduced
and new books adopted. The first treatise on Eng-
lish Grammar employed in the school was the
quaint and intensely earnest little volume entitled
" Familiar Lectures on English Grammar," by
Samuel Kirkham, the text-book from which Abra-
ham Lincoln learned '' the established practice of
the best speakers and writers." To this day Tip
treasures his own time-worn copy of " Kirkham's
Grammar," a slender octavo neatly bound in calf-
skin ; and how distinctly the sight of it recalls the
thrill of boyish enthusiasm with which he opened
it for the first time and read the introductory sen-
tence addressed to the Young Learner: " You areCOUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 105

about to enter upon one of the most useful and,
when rightly pursued, one of the most interesting
studies in the whole circle of science."

It was long before " History " and " Physiol-
ogy " were considered sufficiently " useful " to
form part of the common-school course, though a
text-book on Physics,—Denison Olmstead's " Nat-
ural Philosophy,"—held a place in the curriculum,
and Algebra, a later comer, was introduced about
the year 1854, by a progressive teacher named
Hawthorne.

Mention has already been made of the Yankee
preceptor to whom was intrusted the management
of the school when it first assembled in the new
brick edifice. To some of the younger pupils this
wise man from the East seemed a being of super-
natural quality and probably not subject to ordi-
nary needs and perturbations. Such illusory con-
ceptions concerning him were surprised and par-
tially corrected for Tip when one day at the noon
recess he happened to catch a. glimpse of the Mas-
ter in the act of eating bread-and-butter, and, for
dessert, a piece of custard pie, which delicacies
had been carried to the temple of learning in an
ordinary lunch-basket made of willow twigs. The
discoverer of these evidences of human appetite
feared the man less and loved him more on com-
ing to realize that he, like other mortals, needed106 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

food,—that, though a schoolmaster and a Latin
scholar, he was not so godlike as to slight cake
and pie. However, there was something imper-
sonal in the personality of the teacher, which pre-
vented familiar approach, even at the privileged
'' intermission '' hour, and which at all times held
the boys and girls in tempered reverence of him.
Strict, though just, he was not to be " fooled with"
by the boldest athletic boy or the biggest pretty
girl. Tip suddenly came to a realizing sense of the
majesty of the law when he was himself overtaken
in a misdemeanor with consequences very morti-
fying to his pride. The inexorable disciplinarian
compelled him to stand for an agonizing half-hour
on the top of a desk, holding out a string with a
pin-hook tied to it, with which tackle he had been
detected angling under the seat for Leonidas
Janney's bare toes. " Why, Henry," commented
the Master, smilingly, '' I thought you had caught
a mackerel! Mount up here and show the scholars
your hook and line! " Tip vowed in his indignant
heart, while serving out his term of punishment,
surrounded by grinning lads and tittering girls,
that as soon as he grew to be a man he would
waylay and chastise that sarcastic tyrant; but
years brought the philosophic mind, and he
learned to relent and to forgive.

There is a balm for every bruise, and the dayCOUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 107

came,—it was the last day of a school year,—in
which the boy's humiliation was partially coun-
teracted by an unexpected elation of soul. Tip
yet cherishes among keepsakes a token of the Mas-
ter's favor, a pictorial reward of merit, about the
size and shape of a bank-bill, printed in colors,
red, blue, and green, and inscribed with the words:
" The bearer has by diligence and attention ex-
celled those of his class in —-, and merits

my esteem. - - , Instructor." The

decorative designs embellishing this certificate
represent a bale of merchandise in the foreground,
a warehouse in the background, and a ship under
full sail in the distance, where blue sky and bluer
ocean blend. The precious note does not specify
in what branch of study or line of conduct the
" bearer " excelled those of his class, but this
error of omission probably does not invalidate the
paper.

The excellent teacher just described was suc-
ceeded by his cousin Justin, who also came from
New England, in response to some proffer or in-
vitation from the school trustees. The name
" Justin " invested him with a certain imaginary
stateliness, because it brought to mind the Em-
peror Justinian, of whom Tip had heard his father
read from Roman history. There was nothing in
the new schoolmaster's physique to suggest Ro-108 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

man prowess or command, although his firm cour-
age and strong will might well have won the ap-
plause of Cato. He was a neatly attired, slender
young man, with a face almost as white as marble.

The rougher hoys of the school, conspiring to-
gether just before Christmas to test the metal of
the yet untried, pale, and slender Yankee, resolved
to bar him out of the schoolhouse, and to hold
the garrison against every assault until he should
promise to treat the insurgents to cakes, candy,
apples, and cider, according to immemorial cus-
tom. But imperial Justin had his own views of
domination and of the relations of subject to sov-
ereign. Finding the door and every window bar-
ricaded, he did not pause to parley, but, procuring
a heavy rail from a nearby stake-and-rider fence,
he mounted it upon his shoulder and, rushing
amain with this battering-ram, crashed the door
open, and, springing like a lithe tiger into the
room, took his place and demanded order, which
indeed had come before he called for it.

This unexpected display of physical force, ac-
companied by so prompt and stern an assertion of
will-power, left no one in doubt as to who was
commander-in-chief. Henceforward all the pupils
admired their teacher's reserve energy, and a day
soon came in which they learned to estimate his
fortitude as highly. Why was the man so wanCOUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 109

and cadaverous ? The "whisper went that he was
the victim of a pulmonary disease. This report
caused some curiosity, but awakened no special
concern or sympathy, because no one realized what
it meant. Tip remembers, as distinctly as though
it had happened but yesterday, the dramatic and
shocking scene witnessed on a bright spring fore-
noon by the assembled school,—a scene in which
Justin was the suffering actor. The pale teacher
had begun his routine duties that morning look-
ing more than usually haggard. The hours crept
slowly by; an unwonted quietude pervaded the
school; the Master was ominously silent, while
many an eye furtively followed his movements
as he paced his customary rounds up and down
the aisles of the room. There was something op-
pressive in the constraint of the hour. By and by
a tall girl—her name was Angeline—rose from
her place and went up to the teacher's desk, hold-
ing in her hand a goose-quill to be made into a
pen. Tip afterwards associated the tall girl with
Miss Squeers, who asked Nicholas Nickleby to
mend a pen, and to make the nib of it as " soft as
possible," intimating " that her heart was soft,
and that the pen was wanted to match." The
skillful Master, like Nickleby, took the quill, and
with the sharp, small blade of his pearl-handled
pocket-knife began to fashion the nib as desired,110 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

while lie resumed Ms slow walk down the wide
middle aisle of the room. Tip's seat was close to
that aisle, and he could not avoid observing the
pallid teacher, who suddenly came t(\ a halt and
stood motionless as a statue. A stream of crim-
son gushed from his lips and fell, reddening the
floor. He tried to staunch the blood with his hand-
kerchief. The hemorrhage did not disturb his
calm self-possession, however, nor did his habitual
sense of propriety forsake him. He made no ap-
peal, by word or sign, for assistance or sympathy.
When the bleeding subsided he returned to his
desk, and would have finished making the pen, as
if nothing extraordinary had occurred, had not
some of the older pupils had the prudence to send
for a .doctor, by whom the resolute teacher was
induced to dismiss school for the day and seek his
lodging for rest. Not long after the alarming ex-
perience just described, Justin resigned his posi-
tion, having been persuaded to seek a milder cli-
mate in one of the Southern States, where his
health was restored and where eventually he at-
tained eminent success in the practice of law.

Tip's next schoolmaster was a black-eyed, black-
haired young gentleman whose tact and intelli-
gence soon brought him into pleasant social rela-
tions with the people of best culture in the town-
ship. As a teacher he was alert, versatile, and in-COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 111

genious, but some brought against him the accu-
sation that he gave more of his attention to pri-
vate studies than to the labors of the school. Per-
haps he was reading medicine or law. Be that as
it may, he was a competent instructor, who made
his pupils learn, not so much by compelling them
to memorize lessons, as by lavishing upon them
the ready contents of his own resourceful mind.
The maxim, " Never tell a pupil anything which
he can find out for himself," was disregarded by
this teacher, who told his classes a thousand things
to save them the needless drudgery of painful in-
vestigation, and to incite wholesome intellectual
curiosity. One of the expedients by which he
troubled the stagnant waters of routine proved
quite efficacious. A few minutes of each day were
devoted to the simplest oral instruction in Latin
and in French, not as task-work, but ostensibly
for mere fun. When the combined reading-classes
daily stood up to spell, forming a line stretching
the whole length of the schoolroom, and each
member of the class, beginning at the head, called
out his number in order,—instead of saying
" First," or " Second," or " Third," as was the
custom, he was drilled to say " Primus," " Se-
cundus," " Tertius," or " Un," " Deux,"
" Trois," and so on. The excitement produced by
this instruction in foreign languages, ancient and112 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

modern, was phenomenal, and approximated to
rapture. Furthermore, the exercise was regarded
as being humorous in the supreme degree, for what
could be more comical and laughter-provoking
than that q-u-a-t-r-e spelt'' cat-r-r-r,'' and meant
four, and that nine in English was in French neuf,
a word which the boys made believe was a con-
traction for '' Enough! "

It is to the proud distinction of the rural dis-
trict with which this chapter is chiefly concerned
that for a season the poet Coates Kinney resided
within its borders, and that during a brief period
he had charge of the Ridgeville school. This was
a year or two before the appearance of the beau-
tiful lyric, " Rain on the Roof," which gave the
author his first celebrity, and more than half a
century prior to the publication of " Mists of
Fire," that profound and wonderful product of
his matured genius. Owing to the fact that his
favorite pursuits were literary, Kinney naturally
encouraged his pupils to read standard books,
and to acquire facility in the arts of composition
and elocution. He regarded the cultural studies
as of prime importance, even in the education of
farmers and mechanics, and he never neglected
an opportunity to stimulate, in a young mind of
any promise, a liking for great thoughts conveyed
by means of adequate language, and to call atten-COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 113

tion to the qualities of' substance and of style
which distinguish the literary masterpiece. Under
his zealous and kindly compulsion, Tip was
prompted to commit to memory many passages
from the writings of leading British and American
authors. Among the extracts for " declamation,"
which the boy learned by heart, although he did
not at the time fully comprehend their meaning,
were several long selections from Byron's
" Childe Harold," including the familiar stanzas
on Waterloo, opening with the words,

" There was a sound of revelry by night; "

the passage describing the battle of Talavera,—

" Hark! heard ye not those hoofs of dreadful note? "

the lines on Athens, beginning,

" Ancient of days! august Athena! "

and the noble apostrophe to Rome:

" The Niobe of nations! there she stands,

Childless and erownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago."

Following further the history of Tip's educa-
tion in the country school, we may record that
among his numerous teachers there was one, a114 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

portly young man of Quaker origin, who bore the
Christian, or rather, the Hebrew name of Jehiel,
and who wore a long linen coat, and delighted in
taking his pupils out on picnic excursions. This
is about all that is remembered of him or of his
short administration.

It came to pass after the reign of Jehiel, that the
pupils of the Ridgeville school enjoyed, for a brief
tenure, the sweet unconscious influence and exam-
ple of a most kind and gentle instructor who had
wandered down from somewhere in the Western
Beserve. He was modest almost to shyness, a fact
which did not prevent his patrons and pupils from
discovering his intellectual and moral merit. Tall
and slender, he also, like Jehiel, wore, in the sum-
mer-time, a long linen duster. Tip associates this
warm-weather garment with the circumstance that
its wearer came to Rose Cottage one Saturday,
having the outer pockets of his coat filled with
spring beauties, violets, and other wildflowers,
which he had gathered in the woods and deposited
where he supposed they would not be observed by
any unsentimental farmer, who, on discovering
such a sign of the schoolmaster's weakness, might
report him as effeminate, inefficient, and alto-
gether unfit for the practical and exemplary duties
of his office. The prejudice which many of the
country people, both men and women, of strictCOUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 115

Puritanic or plain Quaker training, manifested
against flowers and other beautiful objects,
whether in nature or in art, was quite impla-
cable.

The best service which the teacher from the
Western Reserve rendered to the school and
neighborhood was incidental and supra-peda-
gogical: he kept for sale, at the lowest price, a
few books of the highest cultural value. His lit-
erary store was hidden away under the sloping
lid of his large official desk, and now and then a
pupil was induced to make a small purchase, not
for the enrichment of the seller's pocket, but to
increase the wealth of the buyer's mind. Our
farmer-boy begged of his mother a silver dollar
which, with throbbing eagerness, he exchanged for
a copy of Irving's " Sketch Book," bound in
green cloth.

The several instructors mentioned in the fore-
going paragraphs were amply competent to dis-
charge all the duties required of them, but during
the period of their incumbency Tip was too young,
or, at least, not sufficiently developed, to appreci-
ate them at their true value or to realize the pre-
ciousness of his opportunity. His intellectual
faculties had scarcely been aroused. The man to
whose skill and enthusiasm he was indebted for
the conscious awakening of his mental powers116 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

came into the neighborhood when the boy was
about fourteen years of age. This man was Isaac
Morris, an ambitious student fresh from Farmer's
College, near Cincinnati, in which seminary he
had been strongly influenced by the ideals of Free-
man Gr. Cary, founder and president of the insti-
tution, and by the personal instruction which he
had received from Professor Alphonso Wood, the
distinguished botanist. Morris entered upon the
work of a country teacher with all his heart and
with all his soul and with all his mind, according
to the scriptural injunction, and it may truly be
said of him that he loved his work and his pupils
even as he loved himself. Without neglecting the
required rudimentary branches, he introduced new
subjects of study and infused a fresh spirit into
prevailing modes of rural pedagogy. Most of the
young people whom he was called upon to teach,
had lived heedless of nature's charm, with eyes
that did not see and ears that did not hear;—he re-
moved the scales from their sight and opened their
senses to the ingress of real knowledge, the funda-
mental knowledge upon which all books must de-
pend. Especially did he make of Botany a genuine
scientific pursuit, an enthusiasm, and a delight.
He was the first of Tip's teachers to provoke a
profitable spirit of inquiry; he showed his pupils
how things happen, and asked them to discover theCOUNTRY SCHOOLMASTERS 117

why and the wherefore of every explicable phe-
nomenon.

The educational energy of Isaac Morris was not
limited to the nine or ten hours daily given to
his pupils in school. He led his troops to battle
of evenings against competing schools in contests
of spelling, a species of scholastic warfare which
still survived in southern Ohio. The boys and
girls of the Ridgeville school held to an unshaken
faith that their master could outspell any other
living man. He was a valiant captain, and shared
with his disciples many victories and a few de-
feats. Tip was severely wounded at a memorable
battle fought against a rival school in the " Sa-
lem " district, in which conflict he went down
betrayed by the treacherous word demesne, hav-
ing transposed the absurd s to the wrong side of
the n.X

A SCION OF NOBILITY

" There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust."

In the quiet neighborhood in which was cast the
lot of the Buckeye Boy with whose years of nonage
this chronicle is concerned, few unusual or excit-
ing events transpired to vary the routine of his
daily occupations. His most memorable experi-
ences and adventures were internal, having to do
with feeling and imagination rather than with the
outward world of material life and action. He
had reached the age at which youthful thought be-
comes tinged with romantic and sentimental feel-
ing, when the monotony of school life was agree-
ably broken by the advent of a remarkable Master,
who wrought many reforms. So original and so
provocative of interest were the personality and
the methods of the new teacher that he soon be-
came the theme of general comment and approval
among the pupils. There was a certain fascina-
tion in his very name, Henry Lord Sterling, which

118A SCION OF NOBILITY	119

in signature lie abbreviated, according to the mode,
writing it H. Lord Sterling. Current gossip re-
ported that the gentleman came from England.
The credentials which he exhibited to the school-
directors were such as left little doubt as to his
high respectability. He brought to them, and to
other leading citizens, letters of introduction pur-
porting to be from several aristocratic people in
the city of Philadelphia. These letters delicately
revealed that their bearer was a scion of English
nobility in unfortunate circumstances.

In person, H. Lord Sterling was tall, though he
stooped a little in his walk, as meditative scholars
are wont to do; his features were refined and
rather handsome; his forehead was high, his com-
plexion colorless, his teeth conspicuously regular
and pearly. He lisped slightly, and his expression
was habitually serious, even solemn. As for his
dress, it was exceedingly neat and well-fitting.

Tip was among Lord Sterling's most ardent ad-
mirers. Never was teacher who seemed more
intent upon improving the manners and morals of
his pupils. He gave a short lecture, every morn-
ing, on the conduct of life and the formation of
character. Furthermore, he took pains to culti-
vate the aesthetic principle, by means of music and
literary art. In the second week of the school
term he brought to the schoolhouse a small musi-120 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

cal instrument which he called a harmonium, con-
structed with bellows, reeds, and stops, much after
the fashion of the ordinary melodeon. On this
ravishing instrument he would play simple airs,
accompanying the notes with his voice in familiar
hymns and school songs. Classes were supplied
with a certain moral " Songster," containing
verses written with a salutary purpose and set to
easy tunes. Among these was a very impressive
goody-good preachment against nicotine:

" I'll never use tobacco, no!

It is a nasty weed!

I'll never put it in my mouth,

Said little Robert Reed."

No doubt this fine sentiment was received with
general moral approval, but some of the school-
boys, though they roared it out at the top of their
voices, keeping emphatic time with head, heels, and
hands, really felt that the poem was too juvenile,
not to say infantine, for their manly ideas. They
were opposed to the use of tobacco, but they de-
spised the puerility of little Robert Reed, and they
suspected the sincerity of his vociferous pledge.

Tip, who was captivated by the harmonium,
made bold to ask if he might not learn to play on
that wonderful instrument; to which request the
owner assented, saying that the youth was wel-A SCION. OF NOBILITY	121

come to take it home on Friday evenings, and to
keep it over Saturday and Sunday to practice.
This generous offer was eagerly accepted, and in
the course of time, to the great distress of his
mother and sisters, the boy was able painfully to
pick out most of the notes to the sacred tune of
" Martyrs," to which he sang, " Mary to the
Savior's,tomb," one of the favorite hymns of his
pious teacher.

Lord Sterling divined the rising spirit of adoles-
cence, and he took an early occasion to conciliate
the same by remarking that it was his intention
to introduce another novel feature into the school,
especially for the benefit of the older boys and
girls, or, as he might almost say,'' young men and
young women, for some of you are no longer
children."

The promised new feature to be introduced into
the school was in due time explained. " It is my
wish," said the schoolmaster, in his quiet, per-
suasive way, " to have the older students prepare
a weekly paper which shall be read aloud every
Friday afternoon. Shall we call it the ' Ridge-
ville Clarion '? I will myself be a contributor.
You are all invited to write pieces for the
' Clarion.' Such exercises cannot fail to have a
good effect upon your minds and morals. Who
knows how many great and good men and women122	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

may now be seated before me!—I mean, how many
boys and girls who will become good and great,
perhaps wealthy and powerful! In the country
from which I came I have seen princes and queens;
in this country every man is a king and every
woman a princess! "

Perhaps it was owing to the boy's confiding
trust in all that was said or done, that his suave
preceptor took Tip into his confidence, consulted
him about ways and means of keeping up an inter-
est in school affairs, and finally proposed to create
him editor of the announced paper, intended to
be the organ of the advanced classes. The Ridge-
ville " Clarion " was started,—a foolscap sheet in
manuscript,—and Mr. Sterling, true to his prom-
ise, contributed to the first number an original
composition, a poem entitled " The Grave." The
" Clarion " did not fail to produce a sensation
in the school and throughout the neighborhood.
It was an organ of reform from beginning to end,
a Miltonian trumpet, sounding for liberty, re-
ligion, and law.

But a wholly unforeseen disaster ruined un-
timely the prospects of the " Clarion," and
brought its proprietor and his associates unex-
pected holidays. One summer morning when the
boys and girls assembled as usual in the school-
yard, no bell rang, no teacher appeared:—in vainA SCION OF NOBILITY	123

the children knocked on the door and shook at the
lock,—no one opened to them. The explanation of
the master's enforced absence soon came and
rapidly spread abroad. The fact was made known
that, while seemingly engrossed in the cares of his
responsible calling as an educator of youth, Lord
Sterling, that man of Light and Leading, in his
quiet, gentlemanly way had been secretly pursuing
the vocation of a horse-thief. Being caught in the
act of concealing a stolen colt in the woods, he was
arrested and consigned to jail by the county au-
thorities, and afterwards tried, and condemned to
serve a term in the State Penitentiary.

To-day, as the gray-haired man who was in
youth Lord Sterling's most devoted and admiring
disciple, reflects on the fervid enthusiasms of
hopeful, bygone days,—as he thinks of those heroic
songs and crusades against tobacco and intem-
perance and slavery,—as he catches from the past
the plaintive notes of the harmonium, and remem-
bers the proud emotion with which he saw his name
at the top of the editorial column of the Ridge-
ville " Clarion," there mingles with his pity for
the deluded school-children of whom he was one, a
profounder pity and pain for their commiserable
teacher who, despite his duplicity and guilt, had
the virtue to inspire in his pupils so much genuine
love for the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.XI

OUT-OF-DOOR AND IN-DOOR AMUSEMENTS

Man is a creature who, though he may be com-
pelled to work, never quite loses the instinctive,
natural desire to play. Notice how the gray-
beard Captains of Industry seek relaxation and
enjoyment in the trivial business of driving a golf-
ball from hole to hole. The child, ever indulgent
father to the man, can always persuade the man
to put off all other duties till to-morrow in order to
go to the circus to-day. Boyhood measures time by
no standard of task or hope of gain, but by the
chances for sport which the seasons, the days, and
the hours afford. It does not look forward to seed-
time or harvest-time, so much as to kite-time, stilt-
time, or time for sledding and snowballing. The
round year is apportioned to twelve moons of vari-
ous pleasure.

To the schoolboys of Tip's district the past ages
had bequeathed a score of persistent games, many
of which had descended in modified form, from Old
England. Every Buckeye urchin knew, as well as
was known to the childhood of William Cowper,
how

124AMUSEMENTS

125

'' to kneel and draw
The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw,
To pitch the ball into the grounded hat,

Or drive it devious with a dextrous pat.''

Long a denizen of the crowded city, the "writer
of these paragraphs, as he recalls the sports in
which the boys of the Ridgeville school engaged on
the playground, more than three-score years ago,
cannot but wonder whether, in these later days,
country lads at school play the games with which
he was once familiar, and if so, whether they fol-
low the same rules as those observed by their
predecessors, employing the same jargon of con-
tention as was heard in the old unscientific period
of'' More on the Saw-mill," " Shinny on Your Own
Side," and " High-Antony-Over "! When they
" knuckle down at taw," aiming at the big bolar
in the middle of the ring, do they say '' marvle ''
for marble, and punctuate every move and turn of
the play with such exclamations as 11 Doubs! "
' Thribs! " " Evs! " " Fen dubs! " " No hunch-
ing! "? Do they play " Scatter-base," " Prison-
ers'-base," and " Stink-base," invariably pro-
nouncing the word base, " baste "f Do they play
" Poison," and " Wood-dog," and " Old Witch,"
and " Three Dukes a-Roving "? Do they put
their courage and endurance to painful proof by
duels with a hard ball in " Sock-about," and with126	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

a hickory switch in ■" Cut-jacket," submissive to
the ordeal required by the Code of Dare, the
implacable god of schoolboys'? Do they assay the
strength of the human chain of locked hands, test-
ing to the uttermost the muscular force of each
player by the strenuous lunging trials of " Bull-
pen "?

Among the favorite games engaged in by the
larger boys, special mention may be made of
" Three Corner Cat," and of " Town Ball," the
latter sport being a simple form of what has de-
veloped into the national game of baseball. Im-
provised playing-balls were made, not unusually,
by winding strong woolen yarn tightly around a
central mass of India-rubber, and covering the
compact sphere with soft, tough leather cut to the
proper shape by a shoemaker.

In winter-time, after a heavy snowfall, Eiley's
Woods became a seat of war. Breastworks of
snow were piled up by contending hosts who be-
sieged one another or engaged in open battle.
From day to day the conflict was renewed; the
compressed missiles were viciously hardened into
globes of ice; many a brave assailant and many a
stanch defender was hurt; the anger of young
blood was aroused to a pitch of recklessness, and
the contest which had begun as an amicable opposi-
tion of energy to energy sometimes ended in aAMUSEMENTS

127

desperate fight for victory, nor was peace speedily
restored even by the intervention of the teacher,
who in vain rung his hand-bell to call the battling
troops from the fierce delight of war to the re-
straining arbitration of letters.

The war-spirit, always dominant in the average
boy, was excited to the highest degree of intensity
among the lads of the Ridgeville neighborhood by
the breaking out of the Mexican War. So eager
was the juvenile desire to answer the call to arms,
that a number of the smaller patriots of the school,
including Tip, organized a military company,
which used to parade to the sound of a toy drum
and a borrowed fife. But like the first minute-men
who enlisted in the days of George Washington,
many of the privates soon became insubordinate,
refusing to obey the captain, and the organization
fell to pieces by virtue of the Spirit of Independ-
ence! Nevertheless, there was no cessation of
militarism. A picture in Olney's Geography, of a
troop of mounted Tartars flinging their long
lances in a battle-charge, suggested a mode of
warfare which the boys promptly adopted. They
imitated the Tartars, substituting for deadly
spears the slender, but hard and tough, stalks of
dead and dry iron-weed. Each warrior provided
himself with a sheaf of these lance-like rods,
which, like Roman javelins, they hurled from ser-128 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ried rank to rank, shouting cries of defiance. Nor
did this method of barbarous melee lose popularity
until after one of the bravest of the brave,—a very
Arnold Winkelried of valor,—received a spear-
point fairly in his right eye, extinguishing its
sight forever.

The wide extent of woodland, with its green
glooms and ambushed recesses, afforded an ideal
field for such truly American adventures as were
mimicked in the wild sports known as " Bear,"
" Deer," and " Indian," games of no small value
in developing athletic body and agile mind, and
of some historical interest because in imagination
they were reminiscent of life in the backwoods and
of the exploits of the pioneers.

Such were some of the out-of-door games, pas-
times, and hardy sports in which country school-
boys of southwestern Ohio were wont to engage in
the days of Tip's youth. Though not a few of these
exercises were rough and boisterous, and at times
even dangerous, they all served in a degree to pre-
pare those who participated in them for the life of
strenuous action and severe competition which
awaited their mature years. The natural craving
for amusements appealing less to physical sensa-
tion and more to the intellect, the sensibilities, and
the social instinct, was at once stimulated and
measurably gratified by recreations which wereAMUSEMENTS

129

enjoyed within doors, and usually after dark,'' by
early candle-lighting."

Of frequent occurrence was the old-fashioned
11 Spelling-Match," which brought contending
schools together and afforded to youths and
maidens ample opportunity, not only to familiar-
ize themselves with the caprices of English or-
thography, but also, incidentally, to gain a con-
siderable knowledge of the intricate art of spell-
ing out their social preferences. Many a pretty
romance of shy sweethearts and of bashful boy-
lovers was innocently enacted on those unchaper-
oned evenings when the meeting of the spelling-
school lent a pretext for more than usual intimacy.

With the school and the schoolhouse was asso-
ciated, also, an exceedingly popular form of semi-
literary entertainment, much in vogue in rural
districts at the time of which we write, and dis-
tinctively called the " School Exhibition." Those
who participated in the " Exhibition," following
a written program, delighted an applausive audi-
ence made up of their parents and friends, by
declaiming " pieces," reading " compositions,"
and representing characters in " dialogues " and
dramatic scenes selected from books or invented by
local ingenuity.

Country " Singing-Schools," conducted some-
what after the fashion of the one immortalized by130	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

Irving in the story of Ichabod Crane, were occa-
sionally organized in the Ridgeville neighborhood,
holding evening sessions in the winter season at
the home of one or another of the more enthusi-
astic members.

Excepting in church on Sunday, choral singing
was rarely heard, and there, of course, the only
pieces sung were hymns. Yet the natural craving
for " concord of sweet sounds " was, in a simple
way, gratified by the enterprising efforts of cer-
tain enthusiastic vocalists who gave concerts,
traveling from village to village. Conspicuous
among these companies were " The Hutchinson
Family " and a rival organization, " The Carmen
Family." Solos and four-part songs, often of a
sentimental character, were rendered by these
rural minstrels, with no aid from any musical
instrument save the tuning-fork and the pitch-
pipe. But it seemed to Tip and his sister that the
Hutchinson Family and the Carmen Family " dis-
coursed most eloquent music,'' and the lacking in-
strumental accompaniment was not missed by the
eager young listeners who, up to the time of Lord
Sterling's harmonium, had scarcely heard any
tunable reed or sounding string, except the rudely-
constructed '' seolian harp " which they themselves
had fixed in a window-casement of the sitting-
room of Rose Cottage.AMUSEMENTS

131

The modern elocutionist, with his readings ora-
torical, comic, and pathetic, had early begun to
practice his fascinating art in the cities and towns
of southern Ohio, and doubtless it was owing to
his interpretative renderings of Shakespeare and
other dramatic authors that a popular interest
was created in amateur theatricals. " Thespian "
societies were talked of even on the farms, and the
dramatic impulse, notwithstanding the moral
scruples of many good people, prevailed so far as
to induce a number of stage-struck youngsters to
venture on giving a crude kind of miscellaneous
performance in the upper story of the wagon-
maker's shop to which reference has been made.
These ambitious actors erected a platform at one
end of the room, improvised a drop-curtain, and,
arraying themselves in costumes the like of which
would have astonished Planche, gave an evening
exhibition of their amateur talent before the col-
lected beauty and culture of Ridgeville. On that
memorable occasion the chief attraction was a
strolling player who, according to the voice of
rumor, had actually trodden the boards of a city
theater. This conceited, pompous individual, with
the assistance of some awkward striplings and a
bevy of self-conscious, tittering " big girls," ren-
dered a scene from Douglas Jerrold's " Black-
eyed Susan," in the performance of which most132	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

of the speaking and all the artificial and absurd
acting were done by the " professional Star."

The dramatic fever proved infectious, and
among those who caught it was Tip's brother John,
who, forming a company of his own choosing, pro-
posed to set forth upon a school stage such situa-
tions as he thought practicable from the then very
popular play, " Pizarro." The scene which he
thought most suitable for presentation before a
Ridgeville audience was the one in which Eolla,
disguised as a monk, holds parley with a sentinel
who guards the entrance to a dungeon where
Eolla's friend, Alonzo, languishes. The dialogue
runs as follows:

" Rolla. Inform me, friend, is not Alonzo, the
Spanish prisoner, confined in this dungeon?

Sentinel. He is.

Rol. I must speak with him.

Sen. You must not. (Stopping him with his
spear.)

Rol. He is my friend.

Sen. Not if he were thy brother.

Rol. What is to be his fate?

Sen. He dies at sunrise.

Rol. Ha! Then I have come in time.

Sen. Just—to witness his death.

Rol. Soldier, I must speak with him.AMUSEMENTS

133

Sen. Back, back!—It is impossible.

Rol. I do entreat thee, but for one moment.

Sen. Thou entreat'st in vain.—My orders are
most strict.

Rol. Even now, I saw a messenger go hence.

Sen. He brought a pass which we are all accus-
tomed to obey.

Rol. Look on this wedge of massy gold—look on
these precious gems. In thy land they will be
wealth for thee and thine—beyond thy hope
or wish. Take them—they are thine. Let me
pass one minute with Alonzo.

Sen. Away!—would'st thou corrupt me? Me!
an old Castilian! I know my duty better.''

John, having taken upon himself the character
of Rolla, made frequent rehearsals of the passage
quoted, reciting both his own part and that of the
Sentinel, and Tip, on these occasions, was delighted
to act in the three-fold capacity of audience,
prompter, and assistant property-man. The aspir-
ing performer of the role of Eolla encountered not
a little difficulty in providing himself with the
accessories needful for the proper historical set-
ting of the play. Devoting scrupulous attention
to absolute realism, he considered every detail
appertaining to costume and properties. The
Monk's disguise was a long black cloak which John134	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

borrowed from his mother. The Spanish soldier
was to wear a '1 slashed scarlet uniform,''—what-
ever that might be. A spear was not difficult to
construct,—but how to provide a '' wedge of massy
gold " and a hoard of " precious gems," was not
so easy. Happily a rich collection of " precious
gems " was discovered in the shining pebbles of
the brook which ran by the very door of the man-
ager's house. But the " wedge of massy gold "
caused much anxiety and many sleepless nights.
At last, while rambling the forest, John accidentally
found a decaying stump which time and oxygen had
transmuted into " something rich and strange,"
of a color somewhat resembling dull red gold, and
from this woodland ore he carved with his pocket-
knife a most satisfactory '' wedge,'' massy enough,
it might seem, to corrupt the conscience even of
an old Castilian.xn

BOOKS AND BEADING

It was the habit of Tip's father to read aloud to
those who at a convenient hour could assemble
around him in the family sitting-room. Such a
leisure interval, usually, was the quiet and restful
period lasting from just after the supper dishes
were cleared away until bedtime, an indefinite
time which the persuasion of the listeners often
deferred until the scandalized clock, with stern,
sharp reproval, struck

" Some wee, short hour ayont the twal."

In winter, when fields were deeply buried in drift-
ing snow, and no out-of-doors work was done ex-
cept to feed the stock, milk the cows, and bring
in firewood, the family would gather around the
blazing hearth to hear the contents of some new or
old favorite book. Never to be forgotten by Tip is
the December day when first the story of '' Oliver
Twist " came into the house,—a volume bound in
blue pasteboards, like a larger " spelling-book."
The father opened the novel and sat down with the
leisurely look of one beginning a holiday; the

185136 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

mother composed herself for knitting a long stock-
ing; the girls put aside the slates on which they
had been penciling pictures; the boys abruptly
ceased from their game of Fox and Geese. Oliver's
adventures began and proceeded uninterruptedly,
and with ever increasing interest, until a climax
was reached in the absorbing passage which de-
scribes the old gentleman,—" old cove," the Art-
ful Dodger calls him,—standing at the book-stall,
with a book that he was'' reading straight through,
turning over the leaf when he got to the bottom of
a page, beginning at the top line on the next one,
and going regularly on, with the greatest interest
and eagerness," exactly in the way that Tip's
father was reading!—The tale proceeds to narrate
how the Artful Dodger picked the old gentleman's
pocket, to Oliver's " horror and alarm," and how
everybody ran " pell-mell, helter-skelter," crying
out " Stop thief! Stop thief! "—" One wretched,
breathless child, panting with exhaustion,—terror
in his looks; agony in his eye; large drops of per-
spiration streaming down his face,—strains every
nerve to make head upon his pursuers; and as they
follow his track, and gain upon him every instant,
they hail his decreasing strength with still louder
shouts, and whoop and scream with joy, ' Stop
thief! ' Ay, stop him for God's sake, were it only
in mercy! "BOOKS AND READING	137

The reading had reached this melodramatic
point when a halt was called; some domestic
urgency required an errand to be done without
delay, and Tip was immediately despatched to the
house of his grandmother, half a mile distant.
'' Don't read any more till I get back! " he begged,
and sped away, breaking a path through the snow,
across the fields and through a strip of woods.
Never was errand accomplished with more alac-
rity. The lad's thoughts of the story added speed
to his flight. " Stop thief! Stop thief! " he cried
aloud, fairly flying over the snowy landscape;
he imagined himself to be Oliver Twist followed
by the yelling London mob, the tradesman, the
carman, the butcher, the baker, the milkman, the
errand-boy, and all the rest, as Dickens names
them.

When the desire to enter the magic door is
strong, the Open Sesame is always found. There
is no difficulty in teaching children to read, if first
a curiosity to learn what lies locked up in the mys-
tery of print be induced in their minds. Birds
need not be taught avidity, nor squirrels to gnaw
a hard nut to get at a sweet kernel. Through
books of nursery rhyme and pictorial fairy-tale,
the boys and girls of the cottage had guessed and
spelt their way from babyhood to the school-
readers,—at first skipping hard words and depend-138	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ing upon pictures to catch the import of the text.
Even the youngest in the family, Tip's sister
Hannah, who, at the time of the Oliver Twist
reading, was not yet " out three years old," pos-
sessed a tattered library including such classics
as " Mother Goose," " Timothy Dump," and
" Dame Wiggins of Lee." Little Cynthia had
grown to the dignity and scholarship of seven or
eight, and was able to read, with some disdain for
its wishy-washiness, Mrs. Sigourney's " Pictorial
Reader," consisting of " Original Articles for the
Instruction of Young Children."

A fair sample of the " original articles " in this
typical " good book " of the period was one
called " The Log House," which was read with
appreciation because of its fidelity to known
fact:

" You see a house built of logs. Large trees are
growing near it, and a small brook runs by. It
stands alone. Few people pass that way. It is in
one of the new states, where there are but few in-
habitants. It has only one room. The floor, of
rough boards, has no carpet. There are a few
chairs, and a chest and a pine table. In one corner
is a plain bedstead and a bed. From underneath
it, a small one, like a box on wheels, is drawn out,
where the children sleep.

" A little boy and a girl are playing near theBOOKS AND READING	139

large fireplace. It is filled with wood, and casts a
bright blaze around. . . . The parents, seated by
their single candle, talk lovingly of their comforts,
and of the friends who are far away. They have
removed to this new country, from the states which
had been longer settled. . . .They have brought
from their home in New England, a few books
which they highly prize. These the father reads
to his wife at evening, while she knits or spins at
his side."

To this day our Boy jealously treasures the
copy of Sigourney's " Pictorial Reader," every
page of which was scanned over and over again by
the gentle eyes of his much beloved sister, more
than three-score years ago; her whose delicate
fingers held the light brush with which she tinted
the rude wood-cuts in water-colors rubbed from
the precious cakes in the cheap paint-box with its
sliding lid; her whose name, painstakingly traced
with the unsteady pen of a child proud of a new
accomplishment, recalls, as he gazes upon it, those
happy days in which she was his dearest comrade>
and renews in his heart a sense of the infinite loss
and inconsolable grief he suffered when she
died.

According to his best recollection the first book
which Tip of his own free will actually read
through, without suggestion or assistance from140 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

teachers or prompting at home, happened to be,—
for the choice fell by the merest chance,—a volume
belonging to his brother John, which bore the com-
prehensive title: " A Journal, Comprising an Ac-
count of the Loss of the Brig Commerce, upon the
Western Coast of Africa, August 28th, 1815; also
of the Slavery and Sufferings of the Author and
the Rest of the Crew, upon the Desert of Zahara,
in the years 1815, 1816, 1817; with an Account of
the Manners, Customs, and Habits of the Wander-
ing Arabs. By Archibald Bobbins." The perusal
of " Bobbins' Journal " gave the boy facility in
gathering the sense of the printed page, added
greatly to his vocabulary, and by a very natural
association led him to other books of travel and
adventure, chief among which were the " History
of the Expedition under the Command of Captains
Lewis and Clark the " Travels of Bruce the
" Travels of Mungo Park "; and the " Life and
Voyages of Captain Cook."

If any rule existed in the house, governing the
selection of books, it was, in effect, similar to that
suggested by Buskin: '' Turn your girl loose into
the library, every wet day, and let her choose."
It would be ridiculous to call the scanty collection,
or scatterment, of books, in Bose Cottage, a
library; but, such as it was, any volume con-
sidered by the father fit to come into the houseBOOKS AND READING	141

was suitable reading for whoever had a craving
for it.

Yet, while no particular dish was withheld from
or forced upon the mental diet, some books of a
prudential, moral, or religious quality were, if not
prescribed, at least recommended, especially by
the mother. One of these was, at first, rather
shunned by the suspicious youngsters because of
the title, " The Immortal Mentor; or, Man's Un-
erring Guide to a Healthy, "Wealthy & Happy
Life." This work,—which appears to have been
gotten up by Rev. Mason L. Weems, author of the
celebrated "Life of Washington," in which the
story of the hatchet and the cherry-tree was first
related,—contains a " Recommendation " by the
illustrious First President of the United States, in
the following words:

" Mount Vernon, July 3d, 1799.

Rev. Sib,

For your kind compliment, ' The Immortal
Mentor,' I beg you to accept my best thanks. I
have perused it with singular satisfaction, and
hesitate not to say, that it is, in my opinion at
least, an invaluable compilation. I cannot but hope
that a book whose contents do such credit to its
title, will meet a generous patronage.

Should that patronage equal my wishes you will142 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

have no reason to regret that you ever printed the
Immortal Mentor.

With respect, I am, Rev. Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

George Washington.

The Eev. Mr. Weems."

Considering this indorsement, from the Father
of our Country, the young people of the farm
felt it a kind of patriotic duty to " peruse "
the " Immortal Mentor," seeing that it was
only a small book, and we venture to believe
they agreed with the man who could not tell a
lie, that they " perused it with singular satis-
faction."

Another book, of lighter purpose, once in popu-
lar vogue, was often quoted by Tip's mother, who
relished its pungent satire and humorous anec-
dotes. This now forgotten bit of English fiction
is entitled, " Thinks-I-to-Myself: A Serio-Ludrico,
Tragico-Comico Tale." No impression of this
book remained long in Tip's memory, except that
produced by the description of a precocious boy,
whose proud mother, Mrs. Fidget, made herself
ridiculous by compelling him to " spout " pas-
sages of poetry which he learned by rote, not hav-
ing an inkling of their sense. He recited from
" King Lear,"BOOKS AND BEADING , 143

'' Blow, winds, and cwack your cheeks! wage! blow!
You cataicac/.'s and luitry canoes, spout
Till you have dwench'd our steeples, dwown'd the
cocks! "

and from " The Bard,"

" Wuin seize the wuthless king! "

and from Pope's " Universal Prayer,"

'' Father of all! in every age,

In every clime ador'd,

By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jovajovalord! "

Among the old text-books brought by the paternal
head of the family across the mountains from his
former home in New Jersey, we may name, " But-
ler's Elements of Geography and History," New
York, 1807, and " A Treatise on Surveying and
Trigonometry," of date 1814, by the Quaker
mathematician, John Gummere, of the West-town
Boarding School, West-town, Pennsylvania. An-
other book carefully fetched from the East to the
West, and much valued by its possessor as an
abolitionist argument, was Thomas Clarkson's
once celebrated " Essay on the Slavery and Com-
merce of the Human Species," translated by its
Quaker author from " A Latin Dissertation which
was honored with the first prize in the University144 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

of Cambridge, for the year 1785." This book,
which did much good service for the anti-slavery
cause in America, was republished, strange to say,
in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1816, by the Eev.
David Barrow. From its pages the boy obtained
his first accurate knowledge of the history of
human bondage, and imbibed a lasting abhorrence
of all forms of slavery.

Besides the books mentioned, several others
which were read aloud in Tip's hearing, or dipped
into, more or less deeply, by himself, in chosen
hours of solitary study, had an appreciable influ-
ence in shaping his notions of things in general.
There were two sets of volumes with the contents
of which, as he grew older and more ambitious of
learning, he became tolerably familiar: "Plu-
tarch's Lives," the Langhorne translation, four
volumes, 1830; and that rather tedious old-time
standard, Bollin's " Ancient History of the Egyp-
tians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Medes and Persians, Grecians and Macedonians,"
in eight volumes, 1829. "What library in the early
part of the nineteenth century, could lay claim to
any degree of respectability, if it did not include
Eollin, Plutarch, Josephus, and the works of Doc-
tor Dick?

It goes without saying that " Eobinson Cru-
soe," " The Pilgrim's Progress," " The ArabianBOOKS AND EEADING	145

Nights," and " Gulliver's Travels," found a wel-
come in the cottage, and that their convincing char-
acters, mingling together in a common intercourse
of enchantment, were hospitably entertained in
the reception-hall of imagination. And all the
people of poesy, breaking the charm that held them
bound in the covers of books, escaped to the woods
and the fields about the secluded homestead, hence-
forth to become visible to the conjuring eye of
fancy, to which the unseen, like Heaven, is no less
real than the seen, and which catches the secret of
romance and song,

" Where more is meant than meets the ear."

How distinctly pictured in Tip's memory is that
dusky garret in the old farmhouse,—the undis-
turbed retreat to which he so often stole away, as
if to a clandestine meeting or a silent conspiracy
with the genii hidden in books. The place was
friendly to solitude and silence,—isolated, remote,
aloft. The bare oaken rafters sloped down almost
to the floor. A tall man could not stand upright
even in the middle of the room, so low was the
roof. Mud-wasps had plastered their yellow nests
of clay to the upper edge of the window-frame.
In one corner of this attic stood a large pine box
crammed full of miscellaneous newspapers, crum-
pled magazines, and sundry other literary odds146 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

and ends that on account of their irremediable
shabbiness bad been expelled from the polite so-
ciety of more " genteel " books in the more con-
ventional room downstairs. In this cbest the boy
found, in varying states of mutilation and decay,
Addison's " Spectator," Franklin's " Autobiog-
raphy," Pollok's " Course of Time," Young's
" Night Thoughts," Baxter's " Saints' Rest,"
" Guy Fawkes," " Rinaldo Rinaldini," and a
fragment of a volume on Roman History. These,
on a memorable rainy April day, did Tip pull out,
one by one, from their hiding among newspapers,
like articles in a grab-bag at a ladies' fair. None
of them took his fancy, however, and he drew
again and again, until, at last, he chanced to grasp
two capital prizes, an odd volume of a three-volume
set of Cowper's Works, and a time-stained copy
of Thomson's " Seasons," minus one cover. In
the poetry of Cowper, though that author subse-
quently became a favorite, Tip found nothing
which at the time much interested him, excepting
perhaps the humorous ballad, " John Gilpin," and
the amiable satire, " Tithing Time but the
melodious realism of '' The Seasons,'' exactly hit-
ting his mood, absorbed and delighted him. He sat
in the diffused light of the window and forgot
everything else in the enjoyment of the florid poesy
of " Spring." With ever-increasing avidity heBOOKS AND READING	147

devoured page after page, bolting at one ambrosial
feast, 11 Spring," " Summer," and a moiety of
" Autumn." Thus on an April day, he may be
said to have first made discovery of the sweet
taste of poetry, in the perusal of James Thomson's
delicious pastoral. Not with an awakened critical
sense, guided by academic rules, did he read, for he
was " too simple to admire," and cared, perhaps,
more for the subject-matter than for the artistic
form of the verse. There was charm in the flowing
numbers, and in the sumptuous imagery. The
omnivorous gusto of youth cannot be surfeited
on rosy-golden words. On the contrary, the more
gorgeous the rhetoric the better does boyhood
esteem it. On some pages of " The Seasons," al-
most every distich presents a florid felicity. With
keen relish the young reader received the poetic
flavor, as if it were a physical sensation, of such
expressions as " ethereal mildness," " lenient
air," " vivid verdure," " white empurpled
shower," " uncurling floods," " breezy-ruffled
lake," and " purple-streaming amethyst." Not
less pleasing in their kind were the happy phrases
descriptive of sterner aspects of the changing
year, as" deep-fermenting tempests," " vapory
turbulence," " loose-revolving fields," " cerulean
ice," " dumb cascade," and " all-subduing frost."

How different from the calm delight and mild148 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

exhilaration produced by reading Thomson, were
the emotions excited in the unsophisticated mind
of the boy, when, on another rainy day and in an-
other low-roofed attic, chance led him, for the first
time in his life, to peruse a play of Shakespeare.
This event transpired in one of the upstair cham-
bers of the old pioneer log-house described in our
second chapter, a bedroom which, with all its
bachelor belongings, was appropriated to the ac-
commodation of " Uncle Bill," who had there col-
lected a small colony of authors that he liked,
among whom were Byron, " Ossian," and Shake-
speare. Such scant knowledge as Tip had acquired
of the great Elizabethan dramatist was derived
from the extracts given in McGufPey's " Bhetori-
cal Guide " and similar school-readers. Perhaps
some vestige of Puritanic or of Quaker prejudice,
lingering in the moral heredity derived from his
parents, had tinctured his conscience with the no-
tion that " Shakespeare " was not quite a proper
book for young folks to read, having so much to do
with love and other dangerous passions, and being
written by an actor of doubtful ethics. But piquing
and challenging the courage which would steal
forbidden fruit, there lay the " Complete Works
of Shakespeare," on Uncle Bill's bureau. Open-
ing the big volume, at random, the boy saw that he
had turned to " The Tragedy of Othello, the MoorBOOKS AND BEADING	149

of Venice," and his attention being caught by the
opening words, " Tush, never tell me! "—he
perused scene after scene, act after act, with ever-
increasing interest, to the last syllable of Ludo-
vico's closing speech,

" O Spartan dog,

More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea! "

when, quite overwhelmed by the cumulative effect
of the passion and pathos of the tragedy, he let the
book fall to the floor, and, unable to restrain his
agitated emotions, gave way to the relief of sobs
and tears. That experience amounted to more
than many months, or even years, of ordinary
school-study of literature. It was an awakening
of soul, a personal renaissance. Besides its effect
in arousing a profound consciousness of the power
that resides in great works of poetical genius,—
especially in Shakespeare,—this particular read-
ing had a special, intense, ineffable result: it fixed
in the imagination and in the lasting affection of
the reader the two characters, Othello and Des-
demona.XIII

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

" But how is it
That this lives in thy mindf What see'st thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?

If thou remember'st aught ere thou cam'st here,
How thou cam'st here thou mayst."

Employing Prospero's words to Miranda meta-
phorically, and applying them to past journeyings
of the spirit, well may one human soul ask of an-
other: " How cam'st thou here! " Over what
psychic path, through what wilderness, aided or
perplexed by what wayside inscriptions and
shrines, guided or misguided by whom, didst thou
come to thy present goal,—thy present condition of
thought, feeling, and belief, in regard to matters
of Religion? This is certainly not an easy ques-
tion for any person to answer with sincerity and
precision, because, however conscientiously he
may endeavor to fathom the '' dark backward and
abysm of time," he finds it hard to remember ac-
curately his own mental and moral history and
progressive development. Especially is it difficult
for introspective memory to recall the beginnings

150RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 151

of perception and of consciousness, the first emo-
tions and earliest prepossessions of childhood.

Whatever other influences tend to make a man
what he is, there can be no doubt that much is
determined by the two great factors, heredity and
environment. The father of the boy whose re-
ligious struggle it is the purpose of this chapter
to trace, was a man of English descent, remotely
Norman, his ancestors having been originally of
the Church of England, though his immediate fore-
bears are believed to have espoused Presbyterian-
ism on or before the date of their coming to
America, which was in or about the year 1680.
Tip's grandfather, settling in New Jersey, affili-
ated with the Quakers, and eventually himself
became a Quaker, making a denominational tran-
sition such as was not unusual in his time and
in much earlier days. We read in Foote's
" Sketches of Presbyterianism in Virginia," that
" the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians . . . who first
came to America generally sought a home with the
Quakers." Both sects were more or less per-
secuted in New England, by the Puritans, and in
the South, by the Established Church. The
mother of our boy was of Scotch-Dutch extraction,
inheriting also strains of English and of German
blood. She had been reared in accordance with
the strictest usages of the Scotch-Presbyterian152 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

regime: had been taught to put aside all frivolity
at the moment the sun vanished below the horizon
on Saturday evening, and not to think of any
worldly thing until the same stern luminary had
set at close of the long Sabbath day. But her sire,
who, it appears, was an obstinate man, tempera-
mentally of the " tough-minded " order of human-
ity, and a great reader, especially of the Scrip-
tures, for some reason gradually relinquished the
Calvinistic creed, influenced by Arminian and
other heterodox persuasion; and his daughter
naturally enough adopted views similar to his
own. Indeed, while in habits of conduct a Pres-
byterian, she became, in her speculative notions,
what is called a Liberal, but never a Freethinker.
After her marriage both she and her husband
found themselves without formal church connec-
tions, he having forfeited his birthright in the
Friends' Society by wedding a non-Quaker.
Though without church connection, it is not to be
inferred that they were indifferent to creeds or
destitute of religious convictions;—on the con-
trary, their minds were engrossed with theology
and religion, not only on their own account, but
for the sake of their children, two sons and three
daughters. The mother felt that it was a reproach
to her that she did not " belong " to some ac-
credited religious society. The recorder of theseRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 153

notes remembers hearing her tell of the mortifica-
tion she once suffered on being personally referred
to, in a public meeting, by the audacious evangelist
Lorenzo Dow, who exhorted her to make profession
of faith in the Lord.

When the family took possession of the farm,—
the " Hurtin Proud Place," there were two centers
of public worship in or near Ridgeville, a small
Methodist meeting-house in the village, and a little
frame building belonging to the " Old School
Baptists," familiarly known as " Hard Shell
Baptists," located on a lonesome hill-slope ad-
joining the Burying Ground, beside the turnpike,
perhaps a mile out of " town." No Catholics
resided in the neighborhood: the Church of Rome
was held in distrust, religious and political; the
Pope was abhorred, on general principles, and the
very word Jesuit was anathema. Against the
Jewish race and sect there existed a vulgar prej-
udice founded on theological intolerance. But the
only Israelites who wandered into that isolated,
rural region were a few meek and innocent petty
merchants from Cincinnati, with packs on their
pathetic shoulders, reminding Tip of Christian
with his bundle of sins,—and it was inconceivable
that such as these could have had anything to do
with the crucifixion of Jesus. These peddlers al-
ways found a meal and a bed at the house of the154	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

farmer, who, somewhat to Ms annoyance, was now
and again accused of giving countenance and har-
bor to " publicans and sinners," for, indeed, he
confessed that he could never quite separate his
sympathies from his antipathies, but was always
finding good in bad, and, alas, a trace of bad in
the choicest good, under whatever label it came to
him. Like Goldsmith's village preacher, he was
careless to scan the faults or the merits of those
who sought shelter under his roof or bread at his
table, and always

" His pity gave ere charity began."

In this chronicle of his flight from the City of
Destruction toward the Celestial Vision, the boy
whose spiritual adventures are here related felt
constrained, in fear and trembling, to work out his
religious destiny as best he could, in a somewhat
blind and solitary manner. He was the second
son of the parents just described, deriving a
heredity directly from them and remotely from
their ancestors back to Adam and Eve. He was
brought up in conformity with Presbyterian tradi-
tions modified by the plain and direct silnplicity
of the teachings of William Penn. He was taught
to say his prayers, to read the Bible, and to re-
member the Sabbath day and keep it holy in a
certain perfunctory manner. There was no Sun-RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 155

day School for Mm to enter, but he was permitted
and encouraged, though not urged, to attend what-
ever religious service was accessible to him. Any
form of worship was regarded as better than none.

It may well be doubted whether so much re-
ligious liberty was a blessing or a bane, in his
case, considering that he was keenly alive to
exciting influences, and that to his susceptible mind
an admonition to spiritual duty, a half-compre-
hended sermon, or even a threatening phrase of
Scripture, often brought painful disturbances; for
the lad had entered into a morbid state of preco-
cious and preternatural sensitiveness. His heart
was troubled. He was beset by doubts and fears.
He was, as he conceived, unquestionably a sinner,—
the chief of sinners;—he had every symptom of
total depravity. He was one of those whom he had
heard described from the pulpit, as being " hair-
hung and breeze-shaken " over the mouth of the
bottomless pit. The worst of his misery was that
he could do nothing to avert his doom, however
correct and virtuous his outward behavior, for, as
his Baptist aunt told him, by grace and not by
good thoughts or good deeds he must be saved, if
saved. Yes, he was lost. John Bunyan, in his
darkest hour, never waded in such blackness as
surrounded this lonesome farm-boy's spirit. The
fear of hell gat hold on him, the wrath of God pur-156	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

sued him. Even now, after a lapse of more than
sixty years, he recalls, with a kind of pitying sad-
ness, the remembrance of those unhappy days.
And, while confessing, with Thomas Hood:

" 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy,"

he is thankful that time brings compensation for
his loss, for though he must lament being farther
off from Heaven than he was at ten or twelve, he
is comforted with the conviction that he is not so
frightfully near Perdition as he used to fear. If
Heaven has risen beyond him, the other Place has
sunk away. Modern preachers do not " take off
the lid " so often as was once the custom. Lurid
descriptions of the Last Judgment and of the
Burning Lake seem to be entirely out of fashion
in the polite pulpit. Truth to tell, he took so liter-
ally the words of the revivalist, that it seemed to
him that Inferno must be, as Dante thought, some-
where underground, and he figured the crust of
the earth to be thinnest just under the old church
where Enos Lackey with stentorian lungs was
praying. At last, in the extremity of his mental
distress, the child appealed to his father for light
and guidance. He took a favorable opportunity
to open the subject which was troubling him, oneRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 157

spring morning, in a " clearing " on the edge of
the farm, near a pile of logs which had been
dragged and rolled together, and were slowly burn-
ing. It chanced that a sluggish " pinch-bug,"
crawling over the bark of one of the logs, lost his
balance and tumbled into the hot coals below.
" Do animals have souls, father? "

" Well, my son, that's a hard question; they
may have souls; most people think only human
beings have souls."

il That's better for the animals," said the boy,
" for when they burn, the pain is soon over, but
our souls burn forever."

" "Who has been telling you such things as
that? "

" Everybody, almost, excepting you and mother.
Brother John believes it. So does the teacher,
and all the ministers, of course. Don't we believe
the Bible, father? "

" Yes; we believe the Bible," answered the
father, looking curiously on his inquisitor. • " I
believe it. The Bible is the Book of Books, the
Word of God. You will understand it better when
you are older."

" Do you understand it? " asked the boy, ear-
nestly. " What does it mean when it says: ' The
wicked shall be cast into hell'? "

"You are not so very wicked, are you? " re-158 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

plied the father, evasively. The response came
instantly:

'' The Bible says there is none good, no not one.
We must repent.''

The father began to perceive that his son was
in real need of spiritual help, and now looked at
the boy with seriousness. He was driven to a sort
of pragmatic refuge.

" Do you believe in me? " he said. " Do you
believe in your mother? Then, listen. The good
Book, which is God's Word, says that God is
Love. He is our Father in Heaven. It says that
even as a father pities his children so God cares
for His creatures. Do you think that your mother
or I would burn you forever? Or would do you
any harm whatever? "

Again the boy had a text to quote. His memory
was stuffed with texts.

" ' His ways are not our ways.' He might not
think much about us. There was that pinch-bug;
we didn't care much when it fell into the fire.
Maybe you are wrong and the others are right.
There are so many of them, and they are smart
men. They are sure we are wrong. I wish I could
find somebody that knows the truth, and can ex-
plain the Bible and God—the Devil—and all the
mysteries.''

Mistrusting the infallibility of his father andRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 159

groping for some Kindly Light which might lead
him out of the labyrinth of doubt and fear in which
he was wandering, the morbid seeker for clews
came accidentally upon a book, the very title of
which seemed a personal appeal or rebuke to him.
The volume was Baxter's " Call to the Uncon-
verted," and contained chapters " Showing posi-
tively what Conversion is," " Showing the mis-
eries of the Unconverted," and giving specific and
minute " Directions for Conversion." One day,
while he sat meditating on sentence after sentence
in this book, his mother, observing his absorbed
silence, asked:

" What have you there that interests you so?
Won't you read aloud to me while I am sewing? "
After a little hesitation, he began slowly to
translate into audible words what he had been
conning to himself:

" Believe this or believe nothing. Believe and
obey this, or you are undone: now as ever you be-
lieve the Word of God, and as ever you care for
this salvation of your souls, let me beg of you this
reasonable request: that you would without any
more delay remember what you have heard, and
enter into an earnest search of your hearts, and
say unto yourselves,—' Is it so indeed? Must I
turn or die? Must I be converted or condemned?
Is it time for me then to look about me, before it160	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

be too late? 0, why did I not look after this till
now? ' "

He choked in his reading, his eyes were full of
tears:'1 Mother! " he exclaimed, '' why do we not
join the church? Why are we not converted? O,
I wish I could be religious and come to Christ! "

She drew him to her; he fell upon his knees, and
sank his face in her lap.

" My child! What do you mean by religious?
I think your father is, in practice, the most re-
ligious man I ever saw. He comes as near obeying
the moral law, as near following the letter and the
spirit of the Commandments and the Sermon on
the Mount, as is possible to man."

" Yes, yes, I know he does, and so do you, but
that is not religion. We must Believe."

" Believe? " repeated his mother. " We do be-
lieve whatever we think is true. No one can be-
lieve a thing without evidence of its truth. You
cannot believe just by wishing to believe, or dis-
believe just by wishing to disbelieve. Belief is a
result of knowledge or evidence."

" No, no, mother; I mean as this book means.
It says, ' Believe this or believe nothing.' You
and father are good, but you are Universalists,
and some of our neighbors think we are unbe-
lievers. We must change our hearts, we must be
born again."RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 161

The composure of the boy's mother, and her
" sweet reasonableness," gave him solace similar
to that he had received from the confident words of
his father, yet he was far from convinced or cured
of his soul sickness. Several months after this
conversation he availed himself of a means of
grace, which, as he devoutly prayed, might enable
him to exchange the heavy weight of his natural
guilt for the easy burden of the cross. A revival
was in progress in the village. He attended a
series of evening services, as did a multitude of
others, young and old. The church was crowded,
from " early candle-lighting " until late at night.
Five' or six different preachers participated in
conducting the exercises of the week. A short
sermon was delivered each evening, followed by
exhortations, prayers, and congregational singing,
of the most earnest, energetic, and importunate
character. Many of the discourses were eloquently
persuasive and powerful. The boy heard them in
a mood altogether reverent, being willing and
anxious to be enlightened, converted, and recon-
ciled to the will of Heaven. He sought salvation,
he yearned to find the way, the truth, and the light.
With passionate eagerness he listened to every
word spoken from the altar. But it was not in his
nature wholly to surrender reason to emotion, and
he entertained a deep fear of some form of self-162	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

deception. The arguments and appeals from the
pulpit added to his confusion of mind. '' How can
God be at once Wrath and Love? How One and
Three ? How Omnipotent and yet foiled by Satan ?
If our Maker desires to bless us and yet cannot,
what becomes of Divine Power? Why does the
Euler of the Universe need a perplexing ' plan of
salvation '? How may the shedding of another's
blood do away with my guilt—atonement by proxy?
Why did God visit Adam's fault upon mankind in
general? What is the unpardonable sin? " These
and a hundred other questions baffled him.

But the emotional and sympathetic manifesta-
tions of the worship affected him profoundly; the
prayers touched his heart; the singing of certain
hymns carried him to Heaven's gate. Other fea-
tures of the service acted upon his nerves so un-
pleasantly that he felt an impulse to fly away and
listen for the " still small voice," in some secret
and silent spot. The clamorous " Amens! " the
vociferous " Thank Gods! " the stormy shouts
of exultance, and the jargoning " Alleluias! "
stunned him with their dissonance, and seemed to
bring pandemonium into the Temple of God. At
times, a person " under conviction," as it was
termed, generally a woman, fell upon the floor of
the church, laughing, crying, and shouting hyster-
ically. A number of her friends, male and female,RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 163

formed a ring around her, prayed, sang, and
clapped their hands, crying, " Glory! Glory! "
" Thank the Lord! " " Praise Jesus! " and, in
their excitement of gladness, embracing one an-
other. At length the convert was raised up and
supported to a seat, when her sisters in the faith,
crowding around her, repeated the joyful tidings:
" She has come through! Bless God! She has
come through! "

It was usual, in the intervals between prayers,
for ministers to walk up and down the aisles,
hymn-book in hand, searching with kindled eye
the faces of those seated on either side, and im-
ploring any who had not experienced a change of
heart to come forward to the mourners' bench.
" Flee to the Ark of Safety! " "Do not quench
the Spirit ! " " Now is the accepted time, to-day
is the day of Salvation! '' Reiterated appeals like
these, from the lips of men called to preach the
Gospel and to mediate between Earth and Heaven,
the young enthusiast could not long resist. He
hoped the secret truths of that Other World must
be open knowledge to God's immediate servants.
Probably his anxious features interpreted his state
of mind to the quick sight of a zealous young
preacher who, passing to the corner in which he
sat, asked in a kind voice, if he loved the Saviour?
Abashed and confused, though grateful for the in-164	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

terest manifested toward him, the lad stammered
in answer: " I don't know; I hope I love Him!
Do you mean God? "

" God, the Son, the Savior of the World,—do
you not wish to come to Him! He is ready to
receive you. Come, my dear young brother, let me
lead you to the mercy seat. Come, cast your lot
with those who seek the better part. Do not hesi-
tate, do not be ashamed of the blessed Lord who
died for you upon the Cross."

So speaking, the preacher took the boy by the
arm with gentle insistence.

" I am not ashamed, but I am afraid I cannot
believe.''

" Do not trouble your soul, my boy, by such a
scruple. All will be made clear. Throw yourself
on the infinite mercy of Jesus."

" But, Sir, I do not understand yet. It is not
right, is it, to join the church and not really be-
lieve? Will you not sometime explain the Bible
to me? 0,1 wish you would! "

" Explain the Bible? "

" Yes; I can't understand it; I don't see the

reason why-"

" The reason why? " The preacher's manner
slightly changed. He seemed offended. ''You
must not expect to solve divine mysteries. The
power of the spirit works only with the permissionRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 165

of our own wills. No power in the universe can
coerce us. We can stride down the eternal ages
defying God at every step, and He cannot help us.
This spiritual consciousness is to the soul what
bread is to the body, and the only way to attain
it is to surrender the will to its inflowings! "
Then, looking disapprovingly in the boy's face, he
added: "You had best leave off Tom Paine and
' The Age of Reason the sooner the better."

A flush of numb heat spread over the boy's body
as he faltered:'' What is Tom Paine ? ''

The evangelist turned and slowly moved down
the aisle to the " Amen Corner and Tip,
wounded and oppressed by a sense of humiliation
and of ostracism, bowed his head upon his breast.
Everything swam before his eyes in unsteady
vision and all sounds seemed far and strange. The
dizziness passed, and he became aware that the
whole congregation was breathlessly watching a
little girl who timidly glided down the aisle, and
knelt at the mourners' bench. Then soft and plain-
tive, like music born of adoration, rose, and swelled
until they filled the chapel, the words of a hymn
sung in sweet chorus led by the voices of women:

" Oh, for a closer walk with God,

A calm and heavenly frame;

A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!166

A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee."

The boy's heart was touched by the sweet mys-
ticism of the hour; by the vision of the innocent
little girl's consecration to a holy emotion; by the
sacred imagery of the hymn and its spirit of re-
nunciation and absolute self-surrender once for
all to everlasting peace; his heart was touched
and melted, yet, deep within the core of his con-
sciousness he heard a voice which warned him
against sinking untimely into Nirvana, which told
him religion must be struggle, not surrender, bat-
tle not repose; that he must think or die.

Protestantism, in its very nature and definition,
suggests diversity. Even the Catholic Church be-
comes two, Roman and Greek, but Protestantism
subdivides and separates into sects, becoming, as
Beecher said, like the split end of a broom. The
natural law of attraction and repulsion acts and
reacts, to multiply denominations. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that, in a community such as
that described, where the two organized church
societies put so much stress upon the fear of God
and His wrath as a negative incentive to '' getting
religion," there should be developed an opposing
principle which placed great emphasis on the loveRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 167

of God. How natural, almost inevitable, that
Orthodoxy should beget Heterodoxy. The reac-
tionary movement in the theology of the neigh-
borhood originated with a few Universalists. The
" Father of Universalism in America," Rev. John
Murray, who had preached in England and Ire-
land as a Methodist, came to America in 1790,
and organized a society called '' The Independent
Christian Church," at Gloucester, Massachusetts.
His distinguishing tenet was the doctrine of the
final salvation of all souls from sin, through Jesus
Christ, who was regarded as holding a delegated
divinity. Hosea Ballou, a convert from the Cal-
vinist Baptists, took up the liberal cause in 1790,
and published the work that is regarded by Uni-
versalists as epoch-making, " A Treatise on
Atonement."

Perhaps the leading spirits in the reactionary
movement in the Ridgeville neighborhood were the
ex-Quaker farmer and his ex-Presbyterian wife,
father and mother of the unhappy youth who was
always seeking the true faith, always under con-
viction, never convertible. As it was necessary
to procure, in advance, subscriptions to provide
for building a suitable house of worship for the
protesters, a society was formed, and the task of
drafting a constitution was delegated to Tip's
father. According to this document, the purpose168	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

.of the founders of the new organization was to
provide a place of congregation, and a kind of pub-
lic religious instruction that would prove effica-
cious in advancing the intellectual and social, as
well as the moral and spiritual, progress of those
who might avail themselves of the opportunity
which it offered. In order to prevent misunder-
standing in regard to the function of the church
edifice, the following clause was inserted in the
constitution: "Now be it distinctly understood
that said house shall always be open and free for
all kinds of religious meetings and for other pur-
poses." Eecords show that the house was com-
pleted in August, 1846, at a total cost of $1,233.00.
An article of agreement with the first pastor of
the society reads:

"We the undersigned, believing that the preach-
ing of the Gospel at stated periods is calculated
to improve the moral condition of mankind and
increase the sum of human happiness, do agree to
pay to the Treasurer of the Universalist Society
of this place for the use of Wm. B. Linell, to aid
him in supporting his family, the sums annexed to
our names respectively, in quarterly payments,
conditioned that he shall preach for us two ser-
mons each month, one at 11 o'clock a.m., and one at
3 o'clock p.m., for the coming year, to commence
on the second Sabbath in July."RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 169

The teachings of the innovating pulpit were
regarded by many, perhaps by most, in the neigh-
borhood as heretical and dangerous. The very
morality for which they stood was considered as
in some sense a stumbling-block. The motive of
preaching, as commonly conceived, was not " the
improvement of the moral condition of mankind
and the increase of human happiness," but was
rather to " convert " the unregenerate, and pro-
vide against contingencies by fire in another world.
Often it was asserted by those opposed to the
Liberal Sect, that " a good man who has not ex-
perienced a ' change of heart,' is decidedly worse
off than a bad man who has been ' born again.' "
Another saying common upon the lips of opposers
was that it is best to be on the safe side, and that
even should the evangelical faiths prove erroneous,
the departed soul of the Methodist, Baptist, or
Presbyterian, would be sure of the Universalist
Heaven; but, if evangelicism had the truth,
then what would become of the soul of the
heretic?

The stress of the new preaching was placed
upon the infinite goodness of God, and such texts
as " Flee from the wrath to come," were never
quoted. The doctrine of the divine fatherhood
and of the brotherhood of all men, and the assur-
ance that " His tender mercies are over all his170	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

works," and that sin brings its own inevitable pun-
ishment in this world, were kept constantly in
xnind. Some of the favorite texts were: " God
is Love "; " As in Adam all die, even so in Christ,
shall all be made alive " He shall wipe away
tears from all faces ";11 Ye believe in God, believe
also in Me " When thy father and thy mother
forsake thee, the Lord will take thee up." Each
service was a love feast; the intensity, the fervor,
the spiritual rapture, which accompanied the ordi-
nary meetings in the new church, were unexpected
phenomena which elicited general remark. Such
ecstasy was supposed to belong exclusively to
Methodism. Whatever might be the criticism ad-
verse to the liberal theology, no one accused the
Universalists of any lack of devotion, or of any
disposition to scoff.

But there was much doctrinal preaching, much
protest, much challenge, much debate. People took
an absorbing interest in textual elucidation and
proof, and there was much quibbling as to the
original meaning of Hebrew and Greek words vari-
ously rendered in translation. Among the books
collected in the heterogeneous library of Tip's
father, were a good many controversial works;
and frequent reference was made to Adam
Clarke's " Commentary on the Holy Scriptures."

To the boy the mental and spiritual activitiesRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 171

inaugurated by the new society in its relation to the
older ones afforded a kind of Renaissance and
Reformation, including a Revival of Learning, for
he became so much interested in the discussions
he daily heard, that his personal afflictions of soul
were partially forgotten in the healthy business of
observing what others were thinking, saying, and
doing.

His intellectual awakening, while it opened his
eyes to a broader prospect of secular knowledge,
increased his interest in those mysterious fields of
religious speculation in which it had become a
habit of his childhood to wander. Bunyan he al-
most knew by heart, and in imagination was often
on the road with Christian, and Faithful, and that
right consolatory comrade, Hopeful. " Baxter's
Call," and its fellow volume, Mr. Allein's " Sol-
emn Warnings of the Dead, or an Admonition to
Unconverted Sinners," were not forgotten, but
they were seldom taken from the shelf. Before
he had reached the middle of his teens the boy had
striven with a tough octavo on the " Prophecies "
(" Newton's Dissertations "), had tackled Paley's
" Natural Theology," and had read with fearful
care " Nelson on Infidelity." Later he had a
serious tussle with Hitchcock's " Geology," which
endeavored to reconcile Moses with Lyell on the
subject of Genesis; and he perused Hugh Miller's172 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

" Testimony of the Rocks," with genuine pleasure.
A translation of Victor Cousin's " The True, the
Beautiful, and the Good," fell into his hands, and
he picked from its pages, here and there, morsels
that nourished. The Bible he faithfully tried to
read, in regular course, taking a fresh start every
New Year, but not much of it stuck in his memory,
excepting the stories of the Old Testament, the
four Gospels, and some parts of the Acts of the
Apostles, especially the stirring adventures of
Saint Paul. There came a period in his life, about
the time of his majority, when he was possessed of
the idea of becoming a preacher, though he was not
clear in his mind what message he had to deliver;
but a few years later he went so far as to consult
a Doctor of Divinity in regard to the literature of
the subject, and the obliging scholar prescribed for
him a preliminary course of reading, the only
books of which that he attempted to study being
translations of Mosheim's " Institutes of Ecclesi-
astical History," and Jouffroy's " History of
Philosophy," volumes that he by no means
mastered.

All these books, and a hundred more into which
he dipped, left their impression and were influen-
tial in helping their reader to " get religion," but
did not furnish him with a creed much more defi-
nite than that, implied in the general conclusionRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 173

which the poet Dryden reaches in his " Religio
Laici," namely:

" But truth by its own sinews will prevail."

As he progressed in his readings and studies,
and, growing older, came into contact with men
of thought and opinion, those problems which have
since been recorded and discussed in such books
as Andrew D. White's " A History of the Warfare
of Science with Theology in Christendom," de-
manding investigation, challenging solution, in-
evitably appealed to the youth's intellectual curi-
osity and to his unquenchable desire for truth.
The closing years of his minority fell in the period
immediately preceding the dawn of the modern
day of bold scientific inquiry, and of a new philos-
ophy based on demonstrable facts. All the vast
implications of the Theory of Evolution, as pro-
mulgated in the writings of Darwin, Spencer,
Huxley, and others, exploded former hypotheses
of the universe, rendering the earlier and simpler
dogmas of belief untenable, and giving impetus to
a profounder and more comprehensive study of
theology and religion.XIV

POLITICS

Most men are born partisans; they take in their
political faith as they imbibe their religions creed,
—with their mothers' milk. This was the case
of the Buckeye Boy whose political reminiscences
are here briefly narrated. He was, to begin with, a
Whig by predestination. Whiggery was thrust
upon him before he came into the world, for his
father, being an " old line Whig " or " Federal-
ist," who had cast his first presidential vote for
John Quincy Adams, and being also a personal
admirer of William Henry Harrison, decreed in
advance that the child, if it should prove a boy,
should be named after the hero of Tippecanoe.
The child did prove to be a boy, and he first opened
blinking eyes to the light, and began to cry over
the evils which beset humanity, in the year of our
Lord 1836, when the candidate for whom he was
named first ran for President of the United States
and was badly beaten in the race by the polite and
handsome Martin Van Buren, the eighth of our
Chief Magistrates. There exists no evidence to
prove that the baby took the slightest interest in

174POLITICS

175

Mr. Van Bur en's administration or that lie had
any views concerning the Panic of '37, the Semi-
nole War, the Tariff, or the National Bank. But
when in 1840 " Old Tippecanoe " came again into
the lists, this time with " Tyler too," against Yan
Buren, Democrat, and Birney, Abolitionist, the
Whig infant, having passed the age of four, was
considered by his parents old enough to take a
part in the phenomenally successful " log-cabin
and hard-cider campaign," and therefore, with
other members of the family, he was taken in a
farm-wagon a distance of eight miles to hear the
renowned Harrison make an electioneering
" stump-speech " at a mass meeting which was
held, September 12, in a beautiful grove near
Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio. The small vic-
tim of party zeal was lifted up by his father in
order that, over the heads of the crowded, stand-
ing audience, he might see the orator where he
stood speaking, and the vivid picture then im-
pressed on the boy's memory presents the lively
image of a tall, slender man making gestures and
talking persuasively to a noisy concourse. As
soon as the address was concluded, the child was
led to the beflagged platform and there presented
to the distinguished man whose namesake he was,
and the General patted him on the head, thus con-
vincing Tip's mother of the candidate's political176	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

and social fitness for the White House. Tradition
insists that the amiable nominee, prophesying that
the little William Henry would grow up a good
Whig, with his own hand gave the lad a Tippe-
canoe medal stamped on one side with a portrait of
Harrison and on the other side with the semblance
of a Buckeye log-cabin.

In the fall of 1844, another presidential cam-
paign was raging, with three candidates in the
field, Henry Clay, James K. Polk, and James Gr.
Birney, the last named of these being the anti-
slavery agitator, the press and types of whose
newspaper, " The Philanthropist," were thrown
by a mob into the Ohio Eiver at Cincinnati, in 1835.
Tip, now eight years old " and going on nine,"
true to his Whig antecedents, was a violent and
uncompromising champion of " Harry of the
West.'' He was of the obstinate age to believe and
disbelieve and say and do all that an unwavering,
" stand pat," party-man could be expected to be-
lieve and disbelieve and say and do; and with as
much positiveness, noise, and fury as possible. At
this stage in his development he took much delight
in the sound of fifes and drums and the discharge
of guns. He attended every Whig pole-raising,
always taking a hand at the ropes which pulled into
position the tall, white, ash-sapling, or still taller
pole made of several ash-trees spliced togetherPOLITICS

177

mast-fashion, and decorated with a flag and
streamers and perhaps a living raccoon. The ash-
tree was the "Whig timber, in honor of Clay, who
lived at Ashland, near Lexington, Kentucky. By
no means would a Whig assist in raising a hickory
pole,—the emblem of Jackson and the " Loco-
focos." Such was the enmity between the parties
that, in the darkness of night, poles were some-
times silently bored down with augers,—ash-poles
by Democrats, hickory-poles by Whigs. The pa-
triots with whom " Tip " rallied, sang vocifer-
ously such campaign songs as,

" Heigh! ho! for Clay we go!

The Buckeye Boys of O-hi-o! "

The ardent juveniles formed a kind of military
troop, supplying themselves with abundant am-
munition consisting of balls of yellow clay, with
which missiles war was waged against any and
all standing battalions or solitary pickets in the
shape of poke-stalks to be found by roadside or in
field. Every proud pokeweed in the neighborhood
was volleyed and thundered to destruction by clay
balls; and though this mode of political contest
might be regarded as mud-slinging of a very gross
and palpable description, it had its parallel in the
vituperative oratorical conflicts of the period, and
the urchins who practiced it suffered no pangs of178	A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

remorse for employing coarse and violent methods
in a good cause, but, on the contrary, felt proud
of their objective method of literally overcoming
poke by clay. Notwithstanding the valiant service
these non-voting allies rendered the cause for
which they shouted, and sang, and fought, Polk
was elected by a majority of 170 electoral votes
against 105.

When in 1846 the war with Mexico was precipi-
tated, and our hero, then ten years old, was learn-
ing " the rudiments," under the instruction of
the strict Yankee schoolmaster who gave him the
" Eeward of Merit," several of the young men of
the neighborhood, who had themselves been pupils
in the Ridgeville school, enlisted as volunteers and
joined Taylor's army oh the Bio Grande. The
younger patriots, chafing under the daily drill and
irksome tactics of the recitation room, heard of
this heroic business with big-eyed admiration and
used to talk about it at recess. One day some of
them fancied they heard an ominous booming as of
cannon far away, and having vague ideas of the
distance to Mexico, they surmised that a battle
was in progress at Monterey, and wondered
whether Jo Githens would be killed. Every lad
was crazy about the war and eager to get hold of
a pictorial paper or of some cheap and gaudy
lithograph, showing the exploit of Captain MayPOLITICS

179

on horseback, or a furious onslaught against
guerrillas or " rancheros of the poisoned lance."
The resounding Spanish names, like Cherubusco,
were almost as exciting as an actual bombardment
might be.—The blood of boyhood, like Sempronius,
cried: " My voice is still for war," but, while we
hurrahed for Taylor and Scott, and hated Santa
Anna, poor man! with all the prejudice of fanati-
cal patriotism, pity for the Mexican common sol-
dier was mingled with our rejoicing in American
victory.

The Boy's father, though a Whig, was a strong
anti-slavery man, who indoctrinated his sons with
abolition sentiments. Thomas Corwin's famous
speech, in 1847, against the Mexican War, pro-
duced a tremendous impression in Warren County,
especially in Lebanon, the county-seat and the
home of the illustrious orator. '' Tom Corwin, the
Wagoner Boy," was a household word in Ridge-
ville and vicinity. The air was saturated with
anecdotes of the great man, and even the small
boys could feel the force of his marvelous elo-
quence and enjoy the irresistible comicality of his
facial expression when telling a ludicrous story.
" Tip " heard Corwin speak more than once at
the Lebanon bar and on the stump, and Tom Cor-
win had become to him an idol. Andrew D. White,
in his " Autobiography," describes Corwin as180 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

" the most famous stump-speaker of Ms time, per-
haps of all times; a man of great physical, intellec-
tual, and moral vigor; powerful in argument,
sympathetic in manner, of infinite wit and humor."
The well-nigh universal excitement caused by the
speech on the Mexican War, not only affected the
minds of mature men and women; it also spread
among the boys and girls, eliciting much com-
ment, pro and con. Such was the effect of one
memorable sentence in the speech, (the sentence
which forever destroyed Corwin's chance of be-
coming President,) that, upon a certain occa-
sion, in Janney's woods, which lay just opposite
to the playground of the Ridgeville schoolhouse,
our Boy, having stained his hands with the red
juice of some wild berry, mounted a stump and
exclaimed to his assembled playmates: " If I were
a Mexican as I am an American, I would tell you,
' Have you not room in your own country to bury
your dead men? If you come into mine, we will
greet you with bloody hands, and welcome you to
hospitable graves.' " This reactionary sentiment
was not strong enough, however, to hold in check
the war spirit in the bosom of the Boy who, while
he would have preferred Clay or Corwin, to lead
his party in the campaign of 1848, was easily
reconciled to accept the popular choice, Zachary
Taylor, though Mr. Webster had declared, on hear-POLITICS

181

ing the result of the convention, that the'' nomina-
tion was one in nowise fit to be made.'' But military
prestige always works wonders, and the name
" Old Zach," or " Old Rough-and-Ready," was a
name to conjure with. General Cass, with his
straight democracy, and Mr. Van Buren, with his
" Wilmot Proviso," were outvoted, and Taylor
was elected. Be it here set down, that, at this
political crisis, the father, Whig as he was, ac-
corded with Webster's opinion, and, for the only
time in his life, bolted his usual ticket, voting for
Van Buren.

A schoolboy in his early teens learns fast and
acquires much in many lines. Teachers are the
radical reformers of political and of social abuses.
They are the true builders of the State. But the
education of recitation rooms is by no means the
only important education that life affords. The
schooling out of school furnishes a chief part of
practical education, even in these our modern
academic days, and, in the comparatively early and
more primitive period with which this narrative
deals, it was of much greater relative value, par-
ticularly in country places. The custom prevailed
of attending public meetings of all kinds and of
talking over the points made by the speakers.
This is the way, according to Dennis Hanks, that
Lincoln managed to learn so much of public mat-182 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

ters, at so early an age. " He learned," says the
record, '' by sight, scent, and hearing. He heard
all that was said, and talked over and over the ques-
tions heard. Went to political and other speeches,
and would hear all sides and opinions, talk them
over, discuss them, agreeing or disagreeing." In
accordance with this democratic theory and method
the Bidgeville boy was brought up. Whenever
public announcement was made, through the news-
paper or by means of posters, that an important
meeting of any kind was to be held in Lebanon or
Waynesville or Franklin or Dayton or any other
accessible village, his father was very likely to
propose going to hear the speeches, and he usually
allowed Tip to go along. In this way opportunity
was afforded from time to time of hearing many
prominent local speakers and some distinguished
persons from a distance, including such men as
Corwin, Thomas Ewing, B. C. Schenck, L. D.
Campbell, Thomas Morris, Thomas L. Hamer,
Benjamin F. Wade, Wilson Shannon, and Salmon
P. Chase. On one occasion father and son went to
a political meeting to hear a campaign-speech de-
livered by Hon. William Allen, ex-governor of
Ohio, the famous Democratic Senator who in Con-
gress originated the bellicose slogan, "fifty-four
forty or fight,"—an orator who, with stentorian
voice, multiplied what seemed to the boy unanswer-POLITICS

183

able arguments against the Whig Party, which or-
ganization, Allen thundered, was responsible for
all the public ills of the time, and had not advo-
cated or enacted a single good law in Congress.
When questioned by the son, about the truth of this
astounding arraignment of his party, the father
only laughed and said: " O, my son, that's politics.
Old Bill Allen can make you believe anything, mere-
ly because he talks so loud and looks so fierce."

The oratory of Fourth of July celebrations,
pole-raisings, and election campaigns, and the talk
engendered by it, were supplemented, in the politi-
cal education of the son, by a good deal of desultory
reading in newspapers. Along with the '' Western
Farmer," and the " Lily of the Valley," came
regularly to the farm the " Western Star," the
" Dollar Weekly Commercial," and, for a period,
the " Dayton Journal," the "New York Weekly
Tribune," and " Noah's Sunday Mercury." Be-
sides these " abstracts and brief chronicles of the
time," the mail brought divers and sundry
speeches reprinted from Congressional Records,
sent forth freely to " constituents," under the
privilege of the frank. Now and then Tip had the
curiosity to peep into these speeches, especially
into those where there were many " interrup-
tions, '' or much '' laughter " or " applause,'' indi-
cated in brackets.184 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

Better than hearing speeches or reading news-
papers and pamphlets, as an agency for inform-
ing and developing the young mind, was the De-
bating Society, a peculiarly Western institution
which reached its highest development in the first
half of the nineteenth century. Ability to think
to a point, to hold arguments in mind, to weigh
evidence, and to form a logical opinion, was culti-
vated in this type of popular lyceum. The effort
which it cost a boy to stand up, before an audience,
in a country schoolhouse, and stammer: " Mr.
President, I think pursuit is better than posses-
sion," or " I believe the pulpit is mightier than
the bar," put his whole mind and body to a test,
and gave the tyro a hopeful start in thought, ex-
pression, and self-control; and when later he at-
tempted, on his feet, to prove that " state sov-
ereignty " is preferable to " centralization," or
that " African slavery should be abolished," he
took intense interest in such exercise of his facul-
ties, and perhaps received more benefit from it
than from routine lessons in his text-books.

A debating society was established at Ridge-
ville by the Quaker schoolmaster, Isaac S. Morris,
who came into the district in November, 1851.
This society taught everybody in the neighbor-
hood something of everything, and set even the
dullest intellects to meditating on subjects thePOLITICS

185

most vital and invigorating. It met every Satur-
day evening, in the schoolhouse, which, on exciting
occasions, was thronged with visitors, every seat-
in the room being filled, and the narrow-aisles
crowded with standing auditors.

Participation in the duties of the debating so-
ciety enlarged the horizon of many minds. School-
boys were encouraged to share in the discussions;
and it was at the exciting crisis of the Kossuth fever
in 1852 that Tip plucked up courage to precipitate
his tremulous maiden speech upon an indulgent
audience, in the course of a heated debate on the
proposition: " Resolved, That the United States
should intervene in behalf of Kossuth and the op-
pressed Hungarians." Needless to say the speech
was on the side of liberty or death! When the
speaker rose, or, rather, when he was pushed out
from his seat by an urgent comrade, his knees
shook as with an ague, and when he sat down,
amid good-natured applause, his heart beat hard
and fast as if he had sprinted around a race-course.

Perhaps the inspiring cause that prompted the
country boy, notwithstanding his extreme natural
bashfulness, to engage in the debate concerning
the relations of the United States with Hungary,
was an address delivered by Kossuth in Cincinnati
in February, 1852, in which the Patriot said: 11 I
am about to bid an affectionate farewell to Cin-186 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

cinnati, and through Cincinnati, to the Common-
wealth of Ohio, that bright morning star of con-
solation and of hope, risen from the West over the
gloomy horizon of Hungary's and of Europe's
dark night.—How I long for words of flame to
express all the warmth of my heartfelt gratitude!
And still how poor I feel in words, precisely be-
cause my heart is so full; so full that I can scarcely
speak—because every pulsation of my blood is a
fervent prayer to Gfod for the Glory and Happiness
of Ohio." Such fervors of eloquence aroused in
the schoolboy's consciousness a sense of general
humanity, and indefinite yearnings to know some-
thing of the larger history and politics which con-
cern the whole world.

About this time another stimulus to moral en-
thusiasm and political zeal bordering upon fanati-
cism, intensely affected the youth,—a stimulus for
which he was indirectly indebted to his teacher,
Isaac Morris. That gentleman, though not in the
habit of reading fiction, had become deeply inter-
ested in a serial story which was appearing in the
columns of the " National Era," a weekly news-
paper published in Washington, D. C. So forcible,
so vivid, so fascinating, did the successive chapters
of this absorbing narrative seem to his Quaker
mind, that he called the attention of others to their
remarkable quality, and took the trouble each weekPOLITICS

187

to send Ms copy of the paper to Rose Cottage,
where all the members of the family, including
Tip, eagerly read the realistic tale,—which wa,s
none other than " Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life
Among the Lowly."

Not long after the publication of Mrs. Stowe's
celebrated novel, there appeared in the " Miami
Visitor," a local newspaper issued in Waynes-
ville, Ohio, a poetical effusion entitled " Liberty,"
by one signing himself'' William.'' A note to the
editor, accompanying the verses and explaining
their origin and motive, read thus:'' Mr. Roberts:
—The following lines were written after reading
' Cabin and Parlor,' one of the would-be replies to
1 Uncle Tom's Cabin.' The author of this work
seems to think that if a person is comfortably
clothed and has enough to eat, it is a matter of no
great importance whether he is free or not."
The protesting " lines," which were originally
scrawled with a lead-pencil, on a fence-rail, at the
edge of a field where the indignant bard was plow-
ing corn, conclude with a glowing and triumphant
exhortation to Universal Nature in behalf of Lib-
erty and Equality!

It was while the brain of our political neophyte
was hot and dizzy with the double ferment of
Hungarian revolt and " Uncle Tom's Cabin," that
the presidential campaign of 1852 began to boil188 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

and bubble. There were three candidates: Frank-
lin Pierce, Winfield Scott, and John P. Hale. The
comparative merits of these three men of widely
differing political persuasion came up for discus-
sion in the debating society, and the attitude of
the now extremely radical disciple of Kossuth
and Mrs. Stowe may be inferred from the circum-
stance that, when questions proposed for debate
were sent up to the president's desk, he contributed
the proposition: " Resolved, That Franklin Pierce
has no claim to the suffrages of the American
people, either as statesman, soldier, or citizen."
The President of the Debating Society, who was a
Democrat, on hearing this read aloud, glanced
angrily round the room, and asked sharply,'' Who
handed that in? " to which the clerk answered,
pointing to the offender, " That young ratsbane."
That young ratsbane, now the bolter, was in favor
of John P. Hale, the Free-soil candidate, despite
the fact that his sire and political monitor stuck
to General Scott, not because he greatly admired
" Old-Fuss-and-Feathers," but because of inveter-
ate loyalty to Whig traditions. Pierce won the
battle, and his triumph was celebrated by the
Democrats of the community, who assembled in the
principal " store " of Ridgeville, where, tapping
a keg of beer, they drank and made merry to the
discomfiture of Schoolmaster Morris, an out-and-POLITICS

189

out Free-soiler, who, as a specially invited guest,
attended the ratification-meeting.

In 1856 the Buckeye Boy whose course we have
followed up to the verge of his legal majority,
though his energies were now mainly engrossed
with the tasks of student life, championed with
enthusiasm the virtues of John Charles Fremont,
the " Pathfinder," Republican candidate for
President; but his hope and enthusiasm did not
avail to prevent the election of James Buchanan.
During the winter of 1857, and the spring of 1858,
the young partisan was traveling in the South,
taking " views afoot," in order to learn for him-
self what he could about negro slavery, of which
so much had been said and written. Returning,
early in the summer, by way of St. Louis, on his
homeward journey he passed through Illinois, and
having occasion to stop in the then very small
town of Mattoon, he there saw, on the border of
the prairie, a recently constructed platform, em-
bowered with branches of withering green. He
was told that, on the previous day, from that stand,
public speakers had addressed a vast multitude of
people, on political issues growing out of the pend-
ing contest between the " Rail-Splitter " and the
" Little Giant." The Republican State Conven-
tion, which met in Springfield, Illinois, on the
sixteenth of January, 1858, had passed a resolu-190 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD

tion declaring,'' That Abraham Lincoln is the first
and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for
the United States Senate, as the successor of
Stephen A. Douglas." Less than three years
later, at the National election of November, 1860,
Tip cast his first presidential vote, one of 1,866,-
000 ballots for Abraham Lincoln.This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
It is made in compliance with copyright law
and produced on acid-free archival

60# book weight paper
which meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper).

Preservation facsimile printing and binding
by

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Brookhaven Bindery
La Crosse, Wisconsin
2014