e people by subscription saw proper
to provide. The schoolhouse in the neighborhood in which I lived
was built of logs, covered with thick boards, and supplied with
rude benches on its puncheon floor for the scholars to sit upon.
We sat bolt upright, there being nothing to lean against. There
were no desks for our books; and had desks been obtainable there
were but few books to use or care for. We boys whispered to the
girls at our peril; but we took the risk occasionally.

It was my duty as a school-boy, after doing the chores and work
inseparable from farm life, to walk every morning a long distance
over rough country roads to school. After I had attained to a fair
common-school education, I concluded that I could teach a country
school, and was employed to teach in the neighborhood; first for
three months at eighteen dollars per month, and then for a second
term of three months at twenty. I think I have a right to assume
that I did well as a teacher, since the patrons raised my wages
for the second term two dollars per month.

My efforts in teaching school did not secure sufficient funds to
enable me to remain at school away from home very long, and I
determined to try another plan. My father had five yoke of oxen.
I prevailed on him to lend them to me. I obtained a plough which
cut a furrow eighteen to twenty inches wide, and with the oxen and
plough I broke prairie for some months. I thereby secured sufficient
money, with the additional sums which I made from the institution
at Mount Morris at odd times, to enable me to remain at the Mount
Morris Seminary for two years.

I never shall forget the journey from my home in Tazewell County
to Mount Morris, when I first left home to enter the school. As
it well illustrates the difficulties and hardships of travel in
those early days in Illinois, I may be pardoned for giving it
somewhat in detail.

It was in the Spring of the year. My father started with me on
horseback from my home in Tazewell County to Peoria, a distance of
fifteen miles. A sudden freeze had taken place after the frost
had gone out of the ground, and this had caused an icy crust to
form over the mud, but not of sufficient strength to bear the weight
of a horse, whose hoofs would constantly break through. Whereupon
I dismounted and told father that he had better take the horses
back home, and that I would go to Peoria on foot, which I did.

The weather was cold, and I was certainly use