In my seventh year my father was called to take charge
of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles
distant, and there the family soon joined him. I remember
that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road
between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the
bowers and other decorations which had been used
shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief.
It was the headquarters of the Onondagas,--formerly the
great central tribe of the Iroquois,--the warlike confederacy
of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the
story was told me on that beautiful day in September a
new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian
stories, and especially Cooper's novels, when I was
allowed to read them, took on a new reality.

Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and
twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling
village of about five thousand. After much time lost in
sundry poor ``select schools'' I was sent to one of the
public schools which was very good, and thence, when
about twelve years old, to the preparatory department
of the Syracuse Academy.

There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best
teacher of English branches I have ever known. He had
no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have
no rules, and his system was to have no system. To
genius. He seemed to divine the character and enter into
the purpose of every boy. Work under him was a pleasure.