instead of compelling me to attend school, and which cut down my real schoolboy days to less than six months. It was, to say the least, a dangerous experiment and one which only a mother (who knows her child better than all others) dare take, and I will not by any means advise other mothers to adopt such a course.
Then when did you get your education? the casual reader may ask. I will tell you a story. When in 1870 I wrote my first book (long since out of print), "Washington Territory West of the Cascade Mountains," and submitted the work to the Eastern public, a copy fell into the hands of Jay Cooke, who then had six power presses running advertising the Northern Pacific railroad, and he at once took up my whole edition. Mr. Cooke, whom I met, closely questioned me as to where I was educated. After having answered his many queries about my life on the frontier he would not listen to my disclaimer that I was not an educated man, referring to the work in his hand. The fact then dawned on me that it was the reading of the then current literature of the day that had taught me. I answered that the New York Tribune had educated me, as I had then been a close reader of that paper for eighteen years, and it was there I got my pure English diction, if I possessed it. We received mails only twice a month for a long time, and sometimes only once a month, and it is needless to say that all the matter in the paper was read and much of it re-read and studied in the cabin and practiced in the field. However, I do not set my face against school training, but can better express my meaning by the quaint saying that "too much of a good thing is more than enough," a phrase in a way senseless, which yet conveys a deeper meaning than the literal words express. The context will show the lack of a common school education, after all, was not entirely for want of an opportunity, but from my aversion to confinement and preference for work to study.
In those days apprenticeship was quite common, and it was not thought to be a disgrace for a child to be "bound out" until he was twenty-one, the more especially if this involved learning a trade. Father took a notion he would "bind me out" to a Mr. Arthens, the mill owner at Lockland, who was childless, and took me with him one day to talk it over. Finally, when asked how I would like the change, I promptly replied that it would be all right if Mrs. Arthens would "do up my sore toes", whereupon there was such an outburst of merriment that I always remembered it. We must remember that boys in those days did not wear shoes in summer and quite often not in winter either. But mother put a quietus on the whole business and said the family must not be divided, and it was not, and in that she was right. Give me the humble home for a child, that is a home in fact, rather than the grandest palace where home life is but a sham.
I come now to an important event of my life, when father moved from Lockland, Ohio, to near Covington, Indiana. I was not yet seven years old, but walked all the way behind the wagon and began building "castles in the air," which is the first (but by no means the last) that I remember. We were going out to Indiana to be farmers, and it was here, near the banks of the Wabash, that I learned the art of driving four yoke of oxen to a breaking plow, without swearing.
That reminds me of an after-experience, the summer I was nineteen. Uncle John Kinworthy (good old soul he was), an ardent Quaker, who lived a mile or so out from Bridgeport, Indiana, asked me one day while I was passing his place with three yoke of oxen to haul a heavy cider press beam in place. This led the oxen through the front dooryard and in full sight and hearing of three buxom Quaker girls, who either stood in the door or poked their heads out of the window, in company with their good mother. Go through the front yard past those girls the cattle would not, and kept doubling back, first on one side and then on the other. Uncle Johnny, noticing I did not swear at the cattle, and attributing the absence of oaths to the presence of ladies, or maybe, like a good many others, he thought oxen could not be driven without swearing at them, sought an opportunity, when the mistress of the house could not hear him, and said in a low tone, "If thee can do any better, thee had better let out the word." Poor, good old soul, he doubtless justified himself in his own mind that it was no more sin to swear all the time than part of the time; and why is it? I leave the answer to that person, if he can be found, that never swears.
Yes, I say again, give me the humble home for a child, that is a home in fact, rather than the grandest palace where home life is but a sham. And right here is where this generation has a grave problem to solve, if it's not the gravest of the age, the severance of child life from the real home and the real home influences, by the factory child labor, the boarding schools, the rush for city life, and so many others of like influences at work, that one can only take time to mention examples.
And now the reader will ask, What do you mean by the home life? and to answer that I will relate some features of my early home life, though by no means would say that I would want to return to all the ways of "ye olden times."
My mother always expected each child to have a duty to perform, as well as time to play. Light labor, to be sure, but labor; something of service. Our diet was so simple, the mere mention of it may create a smile with the casual reader. The mush pot was a great factor in our home life; a great heavy iron pot that hung on the crane in the chimney corner where the mush would slowly bubble and splutter over or near a bed of oak coals for half the afternoon. And such mush, always made from yellow corn meal and cooked three hours or more. This, eaten with plenty of fresh, rich milk comprised the supper for the children. Tea? Not to be thought of. Sugar? It was too expensive—cost fifteen to eighteen cents a pound, and at a time it took a week's labor to earn as much as a day's labor now. Cheap molasses, sometimes, but not often. Meat, not more than once a day, but eggs in abundance. Everything father had to sell was low-priced, while everything mother must buy at the store was high. Only to think of it, you who complain of the hard lot of the workers of this generation: wheat twenty-five cents a bushel, corn fifteen cents, pork two and two and a half cents a pound, with bacon sometimes used as fuel by the reckless, racing steamboat captains of the Ohio and Mississippi. But when we got onto the farm with abundance of fruit and vegetables, with plenty of pumpkin pies and apple dumplings, our cup of joy was full, and we were the happiest mortals on earth. As I have said, 4:00 o'clock scarcely ever found mother in bed, and until within very recent years I can say that 5:00 o'clock almost invariably finds me up. Habit, do you say? No, not wholly, though that may have something to do with it, but I get up early because I want to, and because I have something to do.
When I was born, thirty miles of railroad comprised the whole mileage of the United States, and this only a tramway. Now, how many hundred thousand miles I know not, but many miles over the two hundred thousand mark. When I crossed the great states of Illinois and Iowa on my way to Oregon in 1852 not a mile of railroad was seen in either state. Only four years before, the first line was built in Indiana, really a tramway, from Madison, on the Ohio River, to Indianapolis. What a furore the building of that railroad created! Earnest, honest men opposed the building just as sincerely as men now advocate public ownership; both propositions are fallacious, the one long since exploded, the other in due time, as sure to die out as the first. My father was a strong advocate of the railroads, but I caught the arguments on the other side advocated with such vehemence as to have the sound of anger. What will our farmers do with their hay if all the teams that are hauling freight to the Ohio River are thrown out of employment? What will the tavern keepers do? What will become of the wagoners? A hundred such queries would be asked by the opponents of the railroad and, to themselves, triumphantly answered that the country would be ruined if railroads were built. Nevertheless, Indianapolis has grown from ten thousand to much over two hundred thousand, notwithstanding the city enjoyed the unusual distinction of being the first terminal city in the state of Indiana. I remember it was the boast of the railroad magnates of that day that they would soon increase the speed of their trains to fourteen miles an hour—this when they were running twelve.
In the year 1845 a letter came from Grandfather Baker to my mother that he would give her a thousand dollars with which to buy a farm. The burning question with my father and mother was how to get that money out from Ohio to Indiana. They actually went in a covered wagon to Ohio for it and hauled it home, all silver, in a box. This silver was nearly all foreign coin. Prior to that time, but a few million dollars had been coined by the United States Government. Grandfather Baker had accumulated this money by marketing small things in Cincinnati, twenty-five miles distant. I have heard my mother tell of going to market on horseback with grandfather many times, carrying eggs, butter and even live chickens on the horse she rode. Grandfather would not go in debt, and so he lived on his farm a long