Of the young men who
were my contemporaries a very large proportion became habitual
drunkards and died prematurely. No reform in my time has been so
general and beneficial as that of the disuse of drinking intoxicating
liquors, commencing in 1841. Formerly liquors were put on the
sideboard or table, and the invitation "take a drink" was as common
then as "take a seat" is now. This method of treating was shared
in by preachers of the Gospel, and by all who observed the courtesies
of social life. Now these conditions have greatly changed. Whisky
is banished to the drug store, the grocery and the saloon, and even
there it is under surveillance and so highly taxed as to furnish
a large proportion of the national revenue.

Some time in the autumn of 1839 I visited Mansfield for the first
time, on some business for General Reese, and it was then arranged
that early in the next spring I should return to study law with my
brother Charles. Mansfield was then a very unattractive village,
badly located on parallel ridges and valleys, but precisely in the
center of the very large county of Richland, then containing 900
square miles. The county covered a part of the high table-land
that separated the waters of Lake Erie and the Ohio River. It was
an almost unbroken forest during the War of 1812, with a few families
living in log houses, protected by block houses of logs from the
incursions of Indians, many of whom lived in the county. After
the war it was rapidly settled, chiefly from Pennsylvania, and
divided into farms of 160 acres or less, according to the new
congressional plan of townships six miles square, sections one mile
square, and subdivisions of forty, eight, and one hundred and sixty
acres. The topography of the country was high and rolling, from
900 to 1,350 feet above the sea, with innumerable springs of the
purest water, and small streams and creeks, all rising in the county
and flowing north or south into the Muskingum or Sandusky rivers.
The timber was oak, sugar, elm, hickory and other deciduous trees.
This valuable timber was the chief obstruction to the farmers. It
had to be deadened or cut away to open up a clearing for the cabin
and the field. The labor of two or three generations was required
to convert it into the picturesque, beautiful and healthy region
it now is.

The village of Mansfield has been converted into a flourishing city
of more than 15,000 inhabitants, with extensive manufacturin