Boys are fond of the books of travelers, and I remember that one day, after I had been reading Mungo Park’s travels in Africa, mother said:  “Weel, John, maybe you will travel like Park and Humboldt some day.”  Father overheard her and cried out in solemn deprecation, “Oh, Anne! dinna put sic notions in the laddie’s heed.”  But at this time there was precious little need of such prayers.  My brothers left the farm when they came of age, but I stayed a year longer, loath to leave home.  Mother hoped I might be a minister some day; my sisters that I would be a great inventor.  I often thought I should like to be a physician, but I saw no way of making money and getting the necessary education, excepting as an inventor.  So, as a beginning, I decided to try to get into a big shop or factory and live a while among machines.  But I was naturally extremely shy and had been taught to have a poor opinion of myself, as of no account, though all our neighbors encouragingly called me a genius, sure to rise in the world.  When I was talking over plans one day with a friendly neighbor, he said:  “Now, John, if you wish to get into a machine-shop, just take some of your inventions to the State Fair, and you may be sure that as soon as they are seen they will open the door of any shop in the country for you.  You will be welcomed everywhere.”  And when I doubtingly asked if people would care to look at things made of wood, he said, “Made of wood!  Made of wood!  What does it matter what they’re made of when they are so out-and-out original.  There’s nothing else like them in the world.  That is what will attract attention, and besides they’re mighty handsome things anyway to come from the backwoods.”  So I was encouraged to leave home and go at his direction to the State Fair when it was being held in Madison.

VIII

THE WORLD AND THE UNIVERSITY

Leaving Home—­Creating a Sensation in Pardeeville—­A Ride on a Locomotive—­At the State Fair in Madison—­Employment in a Machine-Shop at Prairie du Chien—­Back to Madison—­Entering the University—­Teaching School—­First Lesson in Botany—­More Inventions—­The University of the Wilderness.

When I told father that I was about to leave home, and inquired whether, if I should happen to be in need of money, he would send me a little, he said, “No; depend entirely on yourself.”  Good advice, I suppose, but surely needlessly severe for a bashful, home-loving boy who had worked so hard.  I had the gold sovereign that my grandfather had given me when I left Scotland, and a few dollars, perhaps ten, that I had made by raising a few bushels of grain on a little patch of sandy abandoned ground.  So when I left home to try the world I had only about fifteen dollars in my pocket.