l water-power mills were put up on the streams, and in
the larger rivers boats were anchored, with mill wheels which the rapid
current turned. But the stills were plentier than the mills, and as much
corn was made into whisky as into bread. Men drank hard to soften their
hard life, to lighten its heaviness, to drown its cares, to heighten
its few pleasures. Drink was free and common not only at every shooting
match, where men met alone, but at every log rolling or cabin raising,
where the women met with them, to cook for them, and then to dance away
the night that followed the toilsome day.

There were no rich people then, but all were poor together, and there
were no classes. They were so helpless without one another that people
were kindlier and friendlier as well as freer then than now, and they
made the most of the corn huskings and quilting bees that brought old
and young together in harmless frolics. The greatest frolic of all was
a wedding; the guests gathered from twenty miles around, and the frolic
did not end with the dancing at night. Next day came the _infair_ at the
house of the bridegroom, and all set off together. When they were within
a mile or two, they raced for the bottle which was always waiting for
them at the house, and the guest whose horse was fleetest brought it
back, and made all drink from it, beginning with the bride and groom.

Religion soon tempered the ruder pleasures of the backwoods, but the
dancing ceased before the drinking. Camp meetings were frolics of a
soberer sort, where whole neighborhoods gathered and dwelt in tents for
days in the beautiful autumn weather, and spent the nights in prayer and
song. Little log churches were built at the crossroads, and these served
the purpose of schoolhouses on week days. But there was more religion
than learning in the backwoods, and the preacher came before the
teacher.

He was often a very rude, unlearned man himself, and the teacher was
sometimes a rude man, harsh and severe, when he was learned. Often he
was a Scotch-Irishman, whose race gave schoolmasters to the West before
New England began to send her lettered legions to the frontier.

Such a teacher was Francis Glass, who was born in Dublin in 1790, and
came to Ohio in 1817, to teach the children of the backwoods. One of
these afterwards remembered a log-cabin schoolhouse where Glass taught,
in the twilight let through the windows of oiled paper. The seats were
of hewn blocks, so heav