reprimanded by our parents. My father also saw to it that our two men servants learned a trade; the one learned tailoring and the other how to make shoes, though it was regarded disloyal, at any rate looked upon with suspicion, if a master permitted a slave boy or girl to be taught even reading and writing. When later we came North we took with us the two youngest servants, one a boy about my age, and the other a girl a little older. They were too young to look out for themselves, and so far as they knew they had no relatives. We kept them with us until they grew up and could look out for themselves.

The people throughout the South, with the exception of the richer plantation owners, lived simply. In our household, for instance, we always lived well, but economically. My mother was very systematic and frugal. She had an allowance of twenty dollars a month, and my brother Isidor has well said that she would have managed to save something even if it had been smaller. It was her pleasure to be her own financier, and small as her allowance sounds now, she was able in the course of two or three years to save enough to buy a piano for my sister. This she felt to be an expense with which my father's exchequer should not be taxed.

We raised our own vegetables and chickens. Fresh meat, except pork, might have been termed a luxury. Many of the families had their own smokehouses, as we did, which were filled once a year, at the hog-killing season. There was no such thing as a butcher in our little town. When a farmer in the country round wanted to slaughter an ox or a sheep, he would do so and bring it to town, exhibit it in the public square in a shanty called the market (used for that particular occasion and at other times empty), toll the bell that was there, and in that way announce that some fresh meat was on sale. This procedure never occurred oftener than once in two or three weeks during the cold weather.

Ice was another luxury in that community. It had to be shipped many miles and was therefore brought in only occasionally, mainly for a confectioner who at times offered ice cream to the people.

There was no gas lighting. Oil lamps were used, but to a larger extent candles, which were manufactured in each household, of fat and bees' wax. In that process we children all helped.

Indeed, with a small business in a small town in those days it was possible for a man to accumulate a surplus only through the practice of the strictest economy by his family as well as by himself, an economy almost bordering parsimony. There were no public or free schools in that part of the South; every textbook had to be bought and tuition paid for; and there were four of us.

When the war broke out new economies were called for. A simple life has its advantages; it is conducive to self-help, also to the ability to do without things and meet emergencies without unhappiness. My father's partner joined the Fourth Georgia Regiment, and my brother Isidor, then sixteen, was withdrawn from Collinsworth Institute to take up work with my father. He had gained some experience in carrying on the business by helping father evenings, for our store was open until nine-thirty. It was closed during the supper hour, but reopened thereafter.

In that part of the country coffee became unobtainable except when now and then a few bags arrived on a ship that had run the blockade. Our mothers learned to give us an acceptable substitute by cutting sweet potatoes into little cubes, drying them in the sun, then roasting and grinding them, together with grains of wheat, like the ordinary bean. This made a hot and palatable drink having the color of coffee without the harmful stimulus of its caffeine.

Salt also became scarce. It was difficult and at times impossible to obtain enough to cure our pork. Some one discovered that the earthen floors of the smokehouses were impregnated with considerable salt from previous curings, so a method was invented for recovering it from that source.

In the later years of the war, when railway transportation was very poor and in many localities interrupted, we did not suffer for food, because, as I have said, most households in the small towns and in the country raised the major part of their food supplies; they had their own chickens, eggs, milk, butter, garden provisions. Children of my age lived largely on corn bread and molasses, of which there was an ever-plentiful amount.

During the second year of the war my father's partner was discharged from his regiment for physical disability. My father, always insistent upon the best possible education for us all, therefore urged my brother Isidor to continue his studies. Most of the high schools and colleges, however, had been suspended because the teachers, as well as many of the senior scholars, had joined the army. On the other hand, the war had fired the whole South with the military spirit, and as was natural for a young man barely seventeen, my brother chose to attend the Georgia Military Academy at Marietta, which was running full blast. Earlier in the war, when the Fourth Georgia Regiment, taking practically all the able-bodied men of the town, had left for the front, the boys of Talbotton organized a company of which Isidor was elected first lieutenant. They had offered their services to the governor of the State, but he replied that there were not enough arms to equip all the men, so that equipping boys was out of the question. All these incidents had influenced my brother in his choice, and he left quite enthusiastically for the Georgia Military Academy to take his entrance examinations. When he returned, however, his mood was much different. Upon his arrival at Marietta he had about an hour's waiting before he could see the proper person. Some acquaintances whom he met on the campus invited him to visit their living quarters meanwhile. As he entered one of the rooms the door stood ajar. Without noticing this he gave the door a push, resulting in his being drenched to the skin by a bucket of water that had been balanced over the door and held there by the position of the door when ajar. He had to return to the hotel to change his entire apparel. He had not heard of hazing before, and the incident disgusted him so that he never returned to the academy. He embarked upon his career as a merchant the very next morning.

In 1863 our family moved to Columbus, Georgia. It was a much larger place than Talbotton, having a population of about twelve thousand, offered more opportunities, and, too, my brother Isidor had already found employment there. With its broad main street and brick residences it looked like a great city to me.

As in Talbotton, there were no public schools in Columbus, so I was sent to a private school kept by an Irish master named Flynn, who did not act on the pedagogical principle, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." By him I was taught the three R's and began Latin. I also experienced my first stage-fright at Master Flynn's, when my turn came to speak a piece before the entire school. In all Southern schools much emphasis was placed upon elocution. I well remember practicing before a mirror and reciting under the trees in stentorian voice with dramatic gesture the great oration put into John Adams's mouth by Daniel Webster, beginning: "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote."

After another year this school was discontinued and I was sent to one kept by a Dr. Dews. He was a teacher trained in the classics and far less severe than Flynn, more sympathetic and cultured. Under him I began Virgil and afterwards Horace. It was not customary to teach English grammar; we derived that from our laborious drilling in Latin grammar.

There