the evening the old gentleman recited Johnnie's exploits in selling those cotton handkerchiefs for three times the marked price, and then chuckled gleefully, praising Johnnie for his success and how he would make a merchant, but that I would never learn; and then turning to his eldest daughter he said: "Hand me the bible, dear, we will have prayers."

Whilst living with this old gentleman I became thoroughly disgusted with mercantile life, as I then saw it and witnessed it, and cast about in my own mind seriously to know what I should do for the future. I realized that I neglected my opportunities whilst attending school under my father's instructions, and I resolved, as far as I could under the circumstances, to supply the omission. I got out my old Kirkham's grammar and my arithmetic and algebra, and spent many of my nights after the store closed in study. At the end of sixteen months of this life I returned again to my father, who was still at Lancaster. During the last year that I lived at Lancaster I assisted my father in his school, teaching the younger children, and still to a limited extent pursuing my own studies.

In the fall of 1844 my father determined to remove to Kentucky, leaving my sister Susan, your mother's mother, with Mrs. Catherine Sumner, a most excellent Presbyterian lady with whom my father had boarded for several years during his stay in Lancaster. My father first stopped at Millersburg, Bourbon county, and took up school, but only remained there a few months, having in the meantime heard of a vacancy in the position of principal of the public school in Lexington. Having secured this position at a salary then of only $600 a year, we removed to Lexington in the early part of 1845.

I became one of the assistant teachers in this school at a salary of twenty dollars a month for the first year, but subsequently was promoted to the position of first assistant at a salary of thirty dollars per month, and continued to occupy that position until the fall of 1849, when I secured, by courtesy of the city council of the city of Lexington, the favor of entering the law school of Transylvania University, the city having a number of scholarships in that institution at its gratuitous disposal. During the four years that I taught school as an assistant in the city school, I still pursued my own private studies at night, reciting to my father in the morning before school hours, until about the year 1848, when I had saved money enough from my meager salary to procure some text books of the law, and commenced reading law. In the meantime I had formed the acquaintance of a young lawyer, Abraham S. Drake, who became a very devoted friend of mine and superintended my reading, giving me such instructions as were necessary. My situation as a teacher in the public school in Lexington was very trying upon my health. I had an average of about fifty small children in a small room not more than twenty feet square, about six hours a day except Saturday, and had to occupy myself with my private studies when I ought to have had the privilege of and needed exercise in the open air. I had some satisfaction, however, in the success of my scholars, making it a specialty to teach them the art of reading well and reading aloud, an art which in the subsequent years I have found our public schools are sadly neglecting. I hope, dear Joe, you will succeed while you are going to school in learning to read, that being a neglected and almost a lost art in this day and generation.

In August, 1846, my father returned to Lancaster, Ohio, and married Miss Hetty Herron, an adopted child of Mrs. Catherine Sumner's with whom my sister Susan had been living. Returning to Lexington, he continued teaching until 1850, when he removed to Millersburg, Kentucky.

In the fall of 1849 I entered the senior class of the law department of Transylvania University, and in March, 1850, graduated and received my diploma from that school. My preceptors were two very able judges of the supreme court of Kentucky, to-wit, Judge Robinson and Judge Marshall. I had first taken up the idea of becoming a lawyer during my residence in Lancaster, Ohio, where I frequently spent my Saturdays in attendance upon the courts, listening with great interest to the speeches and discussions of the eminent men who constituted the bar at that place, among them Henry Stansbury, afterwards Attorney General of the United States, Thomas Ewing, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury of the United States during General Harrison's administration, Hocking H. Hunter, afterwards one of the judges of the supreme court of Ohio. Whilst residing in Lexington, Kentucky, I pursued the same course, visiting the courts whenever opportunity offered, hearing such men as Henry Clay and Thomas F. Marshall, and other distinguished lawyers of Kentucky, arguing their cases.

In the meantime I had joined the Methodist Episcopal church on probation, and made the acquaintance of Miss Rebecca A. McMeekin.

In the spring of 1850, after my graduation in the law department of Transylvania University, I determined to visit Ohio. I had some idea of settling in that state, as my two brothers who remained in Ohio were then in business in Fairfield county, my oldest brother Joseph having commenced the mercantile business on his own account at New Salem, Ohio, and my brother John had commenced the practice of medicine in the village of New Baltimore in the same county. Before leaving Lexington, however, I felt it due to myself and to Miss McMeekin to explain to her my frequent visits to her house. I wrote her a letter telling her of my hopeless condition financially and of the uncertain prospects of my success in my profession, but protesting my affection for her and my good faith in the attentions that I had paid her, and asking her to decide our future for herself. She made no reply in writing, but in my next visit to her she simply expressed her faith in my ultimate success in my profession, and her entire willingness to risk the future, so that when I left Lexington for Ohio, which I did in April, 1850, I was simply engaged to be married.

When I arrived at Lancaster I entered the office of John D. Martin, an eminent lawyer of that place, in pursuance of a previous correspondence with him. He had been a particular friend of my father and an assistant to him in his school during my father's residence in Lancaster in 1842-3. He already had his nephew, Charles Martin, as an assistant in his office and could not offer me any compensation or any work. After two months I found it necessary to do something to replenish my exhausted finances. I first took a select school in Millersport a small town on the canal a few miles north of New Baltimore. After teaching here for three months I took the winter school in New Baltimore at a salary of $30 a month. In the meantime, through the acquaintances of my brother Joseph, located at New Salem, and my brother John, located at New Baltimore, I became known throughout that part of the country as an embryo lawyer. Although not admitted regularly to the practice of law, in the courts of record, I had the right to practice before the justices of the peace of the county, and during that summer I tried some seventeen cases before these inferior courts. I still continued my studies of the law, using very frequently a book known there as Swan's Treatise, compiled for the benefit of the justices of the peace of the state by Judge Swan, of Ohio. This book also contained many references to the supreme court decisions of the state, and I was accustomed after school hours to walk to Lancaster and borrow these reports from my friend, Mr. Martin, frequently taking them home and using them upon the trial of my cases, which always occurred on Saturdays when I had no school.

During my stay in Ohio, I read carefully and with much profit to myself, the daily reports of the proceedings of the state convention that was then forming a new constitution for that state.

Many eminent lawyers were members of the convention, among them Mr. Stansbury, afterwards