ligious;
gems of poetry; the elements of geometry; mechanics; art, plastic,
and graphic; reading Confucius, Sakya-muni, Themistocles, Socrates,
Julius Caesar, Paul, Mahommed, Charlemagne, Alfred, Gregory VII., St.
Bernard, St. Francis, Savonarola, Luther, Queen Elizabeth, Columbus,
Washington, Lincoln, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tennyson, and Lowell.

The boys on the prairies had to earn their bread; they could not
spend six years travelling around and studying all the writers above
mentioned, making themselves morally autonomous, and worshipping
their own deepest and eternal selves. The best men America has
produced were reared at home, and did chores out of school hours.

When I was expelled from school by the Yankees, Mr. McEvoy, the
leading Irish politician, called me aside and said: "Whisper, you
just hang round until next election, and we'll turn out the Yankee
managers, and put you in the school again." The Germans were slow in
acquiring political knowledge as well as in learning the English
language; but language, politics, and law itself are the birthright
of the Irish. By force of circumstances, and through the otherwise
deplorable failure of Miss Priscilla, I resumed work in the school
before the election, but Mr. McEvoy, true to his promise, organised
the opposition--it is always the opposition--and ejected the
Yankee managers, but in the fall of 1850 I resigned, and went a long
way south.

When I returned, Joliet was a city, and Mr. Rendel, one of my German
night scholars, was city marshal. I met him walking the streets, and
carrying his staff of office with great dignity. I took up my abode
in an upper apartment of the gaol, then in charge of Sheriff
Cunningham, who had a farm in West Joliet, near a plank road, leading
on to the prairie. I had known the Sheriff two years before, but did
not see much of him at this time, though I was in daily communication
with his son, Silas, the Deputy Sheriff. It was under these
favourable circumstancesthat I was enabled to witness a General Gaol
Delivery of all the prisoners in Joliet. One, charged with killing
his third man, was out on bail. I saw him in Matheson's
boarding-house making love to one of the hired girls, and she seemed
quite pleased with his polite attentions. Matheson was elected
Governor of the State of Illinois, and became a millionaire by
dealing in railways. He was a native of Missouri, and a man of
ability; In '49 I saw him at work in a m