advent being April 17th, 1852. My brother Sturges Ransome,
who is two years my senior, was born at the old home in Michigan, and I
had still another brother Melville who died while I was yet a small boy,
so at the time of which I write there were three babies in the house,
all of them boys, and I the youngest and most troublesome of the lot.

The first real grief that came into my life was the death of my mother,
which occurred when I was but seven years old. I remember her now as a
large, fine-looking woman, who weighed something over two hundred
pounds, and she stood about five feet ten-and-a-half inches in height.
This is about all the recollection that I have of her.

If the statements made by my father and by other of our relatives are to
be relied upon, and I see no reason why they should not be, I was a
natural-born kicker from the very outset of my career, and of very
little account in the world, being bent upon making trouble for others.
I had no particularly bad traits that I am aware of, only that I was
possessed of an instinctive dislike both to study and work, and I
shirked them whenever opportunity offered.

I had a penchant, too, for getting into scrapes, and it was indeed a
happy time for my relatives when a whole day passed without my being up
to some mischief.

Some of my father's people had arrived on the scene before my mother's
death, and, attracting other settlers to the scene, Marshalltown, or
Marshall as it was then called, was making rapid strides in growth and
importance. The Pottawattomies, always friendly to the whites, were
particularly fond of my father and I often remember seeing both the
bucks and the squaws at our cabin, though I fancy that they were not so
fond of us boys as they might have been, for we used to tease and bother
them at every opportunity. Johnny Green was their chief, and Johnny, in
spite of his looks, was a pretty decent sort of a fellow, though he was
as fond of fire-water as any of them and as Iowa was not a prohibition
State in those early days he managed now and then to get hold of a
little. "The fights that he fought and the rows that he made" were as a
rule confined to his own people.

Speaking of the Indians, I remember one little occurrence in which I was
concerned during those early days that impressed itself upon my memory
in a very vivid fashion, and even now I am disposed to regard it as no
laughing matter, although my father entertains a contrary opinio