The other occurrence was the visit to Watertown of Herr Dreisbach with his famous menagerie.  Our indulgent father took my brother and myself and a neighbor’s daughter to see the “great instructive exhibition.”  It took our ox-team three hours to make the seven miles, and the elephant’s footprints by the bridges, and other impedimenta of the great show, which we passed, carried our excitement, which had been cruelly growing for three weeks, well-nigh up to an exploding climax.  I was told not to lose my ticket, or I could not get in; and when the ticket taker seized hold of it, I held on until he finally yelled angrily, “Let go, you little cuss!” whereupon my father came to his rescue.  The show on the whole was very satisfactory, except for the color of Columbus, the fine old elephant, which for some reason, probably from the show bills on the barns, I had expected to be of a greenish tint.  I also had supposed that the lion would drag his chariot at least half a mile, with the driver in heroic pose, instead of merely two cars’ length.  Herr Dreisbach afterwards showed on Rock Prairie, in the open country, a few miles east of Janesville.  People came from great distances to attend, even from as far as Baraboo, sometimes camping out two nights each way.

Our first public edifice was a log schoolhouse about twenty feet square.  It was on the opposite side of the river, nearly a mile distant, but I began to attend school before I was fully five years old.  One of the things I remember of one of my early teachers most distinctly is, that she used to hang a five-franc piece, tied with blue ribbon, around the neck of the scholar who had “left off at the head.”  I was occasionally favored, but my mother’s satisfaction was greatly modified by her fear that I would lose the coin while taking it back the next day.

The teachers probably could not have passed a normal school examination, but they could do what our graduates now cannot do—­that is, make and mend a quill pen.  Those were all the pens we had, and many a time have I chased our geese to get a new quill.  The teachers patiently guided our wobbling ideas from the alphabet to cube root.  The lessons over, we were told to “toe the crack,” and “make obeisance,” and were then put through our paces in the field of general knowledge.  I still remember, from their drilling, the country, territory, county, and town in which we lived; that James K. Polk was president, that George M. Dallas was vice-president, and that Henry Dodge was governor.  What ancient history that now seems!

[Illustration:  CHASING THE GEESE TO GET A NEW QUILL]