“But mother, although humiliated and heart-sore at the poverty and disgrace that lay before her so early in her married life, was not a woman to fold her hands and think sadly of what

  “‘—­might have been.’

She wiped away her tears, and her busy fingers were soon preparing warm hoods and dresses to protect her little ones from the bitter cold during the journey that lay before us, for in the course of two or three months father had by hard toil earned money sufficient to send for us.  I remember very well that journey over the mountains covered with snow into the State of Vermont, and our establishment in what was called the ‘small house by the ledge’ in the little neighborhood of houses clustering on and about the old Minot estate.

“You children, accustomed as you have been from your infancy to the attractive text-books of the present day, would quite scorn the system of instruction at the school I attended in Westhaven.  I went there three winters, but although I soon rose to the first class in reading and spelling, in which branches I was unusually precocious, my education was confined entirely to those two departments of learning.  Few text-books were then used in the school, for the parents of the children were generally too poor to pay for many, and the musty old Grammar and Arithmetic were kept in reserve for the older scholars.  On account of my youth the teacher did not advance me, and I went again and again through the old Spelling-book, and learnt by heart what was called the ’fore part of the book’—­some dry rules of orthography, which never conveyed the slightest idea to my mind, although I repeated them, parrot-like, without missing a word, and which the teacher never thought of explaining to me.  From the spelling-book I was in time promoted to the New Testament (not as easy reading as might have been selected, by the way).  This was followed by the American Preceptor, and subsequently by Murray’s ‘English Reader,’ a work reserved for the most advanced scholars.

“My brothers did not go to school during the summer months, for their services were then required to assist father in his work; and I, too, had to leave school every day at eleven o’clock to carry their dinner to them at the place, a mile and a half distant, where they were clearing a portion of the Minot estate.

“When brother Horace was thirteen years old he was taken out of school, as the teacher could instruct him no longer.  I was kept at home also, and brother taught me, giving me lessons in arithmetic and penmanship, which studies had been prohibited me at school.  Here commenced a most tender attachment and sympathy between brother and I. As there were two children—­Barnes and sister Arminda—­between us, our difference of years had hitherto kept us somewhat apart; but after brother had been for several months my instructor we were from that time the nearest in heart in our large household.