at work in the hayfield, was smitten by the sun, causing a mental
aberration which made him a wanderer upon the face of the earth, and
finally led him to cut the thread of life with his own hand; my second
brother was pulled by his coat entangled in a wheel, beneath a heavy
load which crushed his thigh. This left the rest of us to struggle as
best we could with multitudinous weeds striving to choke the crops,
and the many trials incidental to wresting sustenance from the
reluctant bosom of mother earth.

My brother Mark, about this time took upon himself the joys and
sorrows of a family and home of his own, while I assumed the care of a
family of forty school children in the neighboring town of I----.

I was but "unsweetened sixteen," and lack of tact and strength brought
me many trials in my endeavors to "teach the young ideas how to shoot
correctly." The usual tacks were placed in my chair, causing the
war-dances incidental to such occasions; the customary pranks were
resorted to by young America to settle the oft mooted question as to
who is master; the inevitable interference of parents followed, who as
usual, regarded their children as cherubs whose wings they seemed to
think would soon appear were it not for the tyrannical spanks of the
unworthy teacher.

I survived the fiery ordeal after a fashion, and that winter entered a
college in the state of Maine. The same old unrest came to me there,
wearied with the dry-as-dust lectures by the faculty of superannuated
ministers, but I graduated after a two weeks' course, and vainly
endeavored for three weeks to catch the divine afflatus at the
Theological Institution, which was supposed to be necessary to enable
me to rescue the perishing as a preacher of the gospel. Then at