My father’s occupation kept him away from home much of the time during my boyhood, and as a consequence I grew up under the sole guidance and training of my mother, whose excellent common sense and clear discernment in every way fitted her for such maternal duties.  When old enough I was sent to the village school, which was taught by an old-time Irish “master”—­one of those itinerant dominies of the early frontier—­who, holding that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, if unable to detect the real culprit when any offense had been committed, would consistently apply the switch to the whole school without discrimination.  It must be conceded that by this means he never failed to catch the guilty mischief-maker.  The school-year was divided into terms of three months, the teacher being paid in each term a certain sum—­three dollars, I think, for each pupil-and having an additional perquisite in the privilege of boarding around at his option in the different families to which his scholars belonged.  This feature was more than acceptable to the parents at times, for how else could they so thoroughly learn all the neighborhood gossip?  But the pupils were in almost unanimous opposition, because Mr. McNanly’s unheralded advent at any one’s house resulted frequently in the discovery that some favorite child had been playing “hookey,” which means (I will say to the uninitiated, if any such there be) absenting one’s self from school without permission, to go on a fishing or a swimming frolic.  Such at least was my experience more than once, for Mr. McNanly particularly favored my mother’s house, because of a former acquaintanceship in Ireland, and many a time a comparison of notes proved that I had been in the woods with two playfellows, named Binckly and Greiner, when the master thought I was home, ill, and my mother, that I was at school, deeply immersed in study.  However, with these and other delinquencies not uncommon among boys, I learned at McNanly’s school, and a little later, under a pedagogue named Thorn, a smattering of geography and history, and explored the mysteries of Pike’s Arithmetic and Bullions’ English Grammar, about as far as I could be carried up to the age of fourteen.  This was all the education then bestowed upon me, and this—­with the exception of progressing in some of these branches by voluntary study, and by practical application in others, supplemented by a few months of preparation after receiving my appointment as a cadet—­was the extent of my learning on entering the Military Academy.

When about fourteen years old I began to do something for myself; Mr. John Talbot, who kept a country store in the village, employing me to deal out sugar, coffee, and calico to his customers at the munificent salary of twenty-four dollars a year.  After I had gained a twelve-months’ experience with Mr. Talbot my services began to be sought by, others, and a Mr. David Whitehead secured them by the offer of sixty dollars a year—­Talbot refusing to increase