erfered all
she could, and tried hard to prevent him. But as this was all the
experience he ever had had, and as he had never studied warfare, he
didn't know anything about handling large bodies of troops.

However, he had a clear mind and a good natural insight; and in spite of
his ignorance, of which he was painfully conscious, he managed to win
the war, and then thankfully returned to his farm. He went back with
enthusiasm. He had been away for eight years altogether, and for six of
those years he did not once set foot on his fields. He had found time,
however, in between whiles, to talk with the farmers in the northerly
parts of his country, and collect new ideas. He now began to experiment
with plaster of Paris and powdered stone as fertilizers. He tried
clover, rye, peas, oats and carrots to strengthen his land. He tried
mud. He planted potatoes with manure, and potatoes without, and noted
exactly what the difference was in the yield. His diary speaks of the
chinch bugs attacking his corn, and of the mean way the rain had of
passing by on the other side of the river, falling generously there,
while "not enough fell here to wet a handkerchief." He laboriously
calculated the number of seed in a pound (this retired Commander!) and
found that red clover had 71,000, timothy 298,000 and barley 8,925.

He also began at this time to use false teeth, which fitted him badly.
And he was laid up occasionally with malaria, and fever and ague. And he
was called upon to help frame a constitution for his little nation. A
busy period. He had an attack of rheumatism, too, which lasted over six
months, and it was sometimes so bad he could hardly raise his hand to
his head or turn over in bed. And when the national constitution had
been adopted they elected him president. That meant a lot of outside
work for another eight years.

Some of this work he hated. He hated speech-making for instance. At his
inauguration he was so agitated and embarrassed that men saw he
trembled, and when he read his speech his voice was almost too low to be
heard. He was always very conscious of having a poor education, and
being a bad speller and so forth. But the people didn't care about that,
much: they trusted his judgment, and admired the man's goodness and
spirit.

A sculptor was sent to make a statue of him, late in his life. He
couldn't get him to pose satisfactorily. No noble attitudes. In vain did
the sculptor talk about state affairs and tha