One day, when I was first trusted to go in the boat alone, a stranger called over, and as my father was busy, he told me to go after him.  The man expressed much wonderment, and some hesitancy to trusting himself to the skill and strength of a bare-footed boy of five; but I assured him I was a veteran at the business.  He finally got in very gingerly, and sat down flat on the bottom.  All the way over he kept wondering at and praising my work until I was ready to melt with mingled embarrassment and delight.  At the shore he asked me unctuously how much he should pay.  “Oh, nothing,” I said.  “But let me pay you.  I’d be glad to,” said he.  “Oh, no, we never take pay,” I replied, and dug my toes into the sand, not knowing how to get out of the scrape, yet well pleased at his high estimate of my service.  All the time he was plunging down first into one pocket of his barn-door trousers and then the other, till at last he fished out an old “bungtown” cent, which with much graciousness and pomposity he pressed upon me, until my feeble refusals were overcome.  I took the coin and scampered away so fast that I must have been invisible in the dust I raised.  Showing it to my father, I was told that I ought not to have taken it; but I explained how helpless I had been, and repeated word for word what the man had said, and, unintentionally, somewhat copied his tone and manner.  The twinkle in my father’s eye showed that he understood.  That copper was my first-earned money; if it had only been put out at compound interest, I ought, if the mathematicians are right, to be now living in otium cum dignitate,[2] perhaps.

[Footnote 2:  Otium cum dignitate is a Latin expression meaning ease with dignity.]

[Illustration:  HE FISHED OUT AN OLD BUNGTOWN CENT]

Steve Peck was one of the most notable of the marked characters above hinted at.  He was a roistering blade, who captained all the harumscarums of the section.  Peck was a surveyor and had helped at the laying out of Milwaukee.  Many were the stories told of his escapades, but space will not permit of their rehearsal here.  He had selected a choice piece of land and built a good house; then he induced the daughter of an Aberdeen ex-merchant of aristocratic family but broken fortune, who had sought a new chance in the wilds of Wisconsin, to share them with him.  But wife and children could not hold him to a settled life, and he sold out one day to a German immigrant, gave his wife a few dollars and disappeared, not to be seen or heard of in those parts again.

Another character was a man named Needham, who also was somewhat of a mystery.  The women considered that he had been “crossed in love.”  He affected a sombre style, rather imitating the manners and habits of the Indians.  His cabin was near the river, and he was a constant hunter.  Many times when playing by the shore I would become conscious of a strange, noiseless presence, and looking up would