Fifty Years of Public Service | Page 4

so-called Middle States, as the "winter of the
deep snow." For months it was impossible to pass from one community
to another in the country.

My education was obtained at the local schools and at the seminary at
Mount Morris two hundred miles distant from my father's home.
In my boyhood years there were no common schools. There were only
such schools in the country as the 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 used up when I arrived in
Peoria. I went to bed, departing early the following morning, by
steamer, for Peru, a distance of twenty-five miles. From there I took the
stage-coach to Dixon, a distance of twelve miles.
There came up another storm during the journey from Peru to Dixon,
and the driver of the stage-coach lost his way and could not keep in the
road. I ran along in front of the coach most of the way, in order to keep
it in the road, the horses following me. From Dixon I crossed the river,
proceeding to Mount Morris by private conveyance. I never had a more
severe trip, and I felt its effects for very many years afterwards.
The days I spent in old Mount Morris Seminary were the pleasantest of
my life. I was just at the age which might be termed the formative
period of a young man's career. Had I been surrounded then by other
companions, by other environment, my whole future might have been
entirely different. Judged by the standard of the great Eastern
institutions, Mount Morris was not even a third-class college; but it was
a good school, attended by young men of an unusually high order. In
those early days it was the leading institution of higher learning in
Northern Illinois. I enjoyed Mount Morris, and the friendships formed
there continued throughout my life.
I do not know whether I was a popular student or not, but I was
president of the Amphictyon Society, and, according to the usual
custom, was to deliver the address on retiring from the presidency.
During the course of the address I fainted and was carried from the
chapel,