t took two days to go and two to
return, and for their load they got the princely sum of seven dollars,
with which they counted themselves rich.

James Hill, the father of James Jerome Hill, was a North of Ireland man;
his wife was Anne Dunbar, good and Scotch. I saw a portrait of Anne
Dunbar Hill in Mr. Hill's residence at Saint Paul, and was also shown
the daguerreotype from which it was painted. It shows a woman of decided
personality, strong in feature, frank, fearless, honest, sane and
poised. The dress reveals the columnar neck that goes only with superb
bodily vigor--the nose is large, the chin firm, the mouth strong. She
looks like a Spartan, save for the pensive eyes that gaze upon a world
from which she has passed, hungry and wistful. The woman certainly had
ambition and aspiration which were unsatisfied.

James J. Hill is the son of his mother. His form, features, mental
characteristics and ambition are the endowment of mother to son.

It was a tough old farm, then as now. As I tramped across its undulating
acres, a week ago, and saw the stone fences and the piles of glacial
drift that Jim Hill's hands helped pick up, I thought of the poverty of
the situation when no railroad passed that way, and wheat was twenty
cents a bushel, and pork one cent a pound--all for lack of a market!

Jim Hill as a boy fought the battle of life with ax, hoe, maul, adz,
shovel, pick, mattock, drawshave, rake and pitchfork. Wool was carded
and spun and woven by hand. The grist was carried to the mill on
horseback, or if the roads were bad, on the farmer's back. All this
pioneer experience came to James J. Hill as a necessary part of his
education.

Life in Canada West in the Forties was essentially the same as life in
Western New York at the same period. The country was a forest, traversed
with swamps and sink-holes, on which roads were built by laying down
long logs and across these, small logs. This formed the classic corduroy
road. When ten years of age James Hill contracted to build a mile of
corduroy road, between his father's farm and the village. For this labor
his father promised him a two-year-old colt. The boy built the road all
right. It took him six months, but the grades were easy and the curves
so-so. The Tom Sawyer plan came in handy, otherwise it is probable there
would have been a default on the time-limit. And Jim got the colt. He
rode the animal for half a year, back and forth all Winter from the farm
to th