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the task laid upon them is not surprising; the wonder is that they did not fail altogether. To this mode of nourishment I owe the biliousness, the dyspepsia and the low spirits of my early life.

In a large family the children always run in pairs. My older brothers and sisters were my tyrannical enemies, against whom my brother Thomas and I formed an alliance, offensive and defensive. He, the next older than I, stood between me and the buffetings of the grown-up world. On every occasion we paired, and were always mentioned together as Tommie and Allie. When I went into the army Thomas followed; soon after I left home Thomas died. I do not remember ever quarrelling with him; with others I could kick and scratch; never with Thomas!

Our house was so arranged that the night was the time of adventure. When we went to bed we never knew what would happen before morning. The flat roof over our heads was so related to the hill behind the house that it was possible for any man or beast to step from the hill to the housetop. As we lay in bed we could hear cats and coons scurrying over our heads; these we soon learned to endure, but when the cattle came down we had to go out in our night-shirts and drive them off. Then we would call our dog, Rollo, to keep guard on the roof while we slept.

This early home life remains with me as a medley of crying, crawling babies, laughing, weeping boys and girls. I was carried along in this family life as in a boat. I remember it only as one remembers passing scenery: the details are forgotten, only the general impression remains. I can recall only a few distinct incidents, such as an unjust punishment, the grey witch, the grey man, disgrace at school, my walks with my father, and the like.

T

CHAPTER III

THE UNJUST PUNISHMENT

HERE is no event in human history more interesting and exciting than the settlement of the Ohio Valley in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century. What was in eighteen-twenty an almost unbroken wilderness became in eighteen-fifty the site of thriving villages and populous cities. The richness of the soil, the abundance and value of the timber, the unfailing water power furnished by brooks, creeks and rivers, attracted settlers from various parts of the world, especially from Virginia and the Eastern States, from Ireland and Germany.

In eighteen-twenty Cincinnati was a military post on the banks of the Ohio, protecting a few hundred settlers; in eighteen-fifty it was a thriving city of three hundred thousand people, a centre of trade, especially with the South; with churches, schools, and colleges; renowned for its scientific, artistic and musical institutions. This distinction it owed in a large measure to the German element of its population. Men of culture came to this new country to enjoy its intellectual freedom; peasants by the thousands were attracted by the freedom of the land, and artisans by the scarcity of labourers. One large section, separated from the rest of the city by a canal, was known as "over the Rhine"; only the German language was common to that section of the city.

The movement of population from East to West was as constant as the flowing of the Ohio River. Our house was

situated on the Harrison Turnpike about five miles west of Cincinnati, and was a landmark to the emigrants making their way to the Golden West. Standing on its terraced hill-side surrounded by its orchards of peach and peartrees and its grove of locusts, with roses blooming in its dooryard, it was to the emigrant his first view of the promised land.

Lawyer Crapsey's house was the site of a famous spring of water. This spring came out from under the limestone rock, a steady stream of clear, cold water; the spring proper was covered by a spring house, in which was housed the milk, the butter, the eggs and perishable fruit of the household; outside the spring house on the roadside was a great trough for the watering of horses and cattle, and drinking-cups for men, women and children.

The children of the Crapsey family found unending delight, sitting on the roof of the spring house, watching the wagons go by. They were long wagons, covered with canvas, drawn by teams of horses or oxen. The emigrants lived in the wagons; they carried their cooking-utensils hanging from the wagonsides; in fair weather they ate and slept on the wayside; in foul weather they huddled under their canvas covering. The children laughed and played beside their moving homes; the mothers nursed their babes under the open sky, and so they went on and on, an unending procession of wagons carrying an old people going to an old land, that out of these two oldnesses there might come forth a new people and a new land, people and land combining to create a new era for the human race.

All flowing streams deposit a sediment and it was so with this moving stream of humanity: A mile or so to the westward of our home was such a deposit. It was composed of poor whites from Virginia; of feeble Germans and drunken Irish. The centre of this settlement was the saloon; not a reputable beer saloon, but a ginshop of the

lowest order, the scene of drunken orgies and sexual immoralities. This vicious deposit lay between our house and a village half a mile beyond in which was the grocery that furnished us with our daily supplies. To this grocery I was sent as occasion required; this errand was to Thomas and myself a dread and a danger. As we walked along the road there would rush out at us from this ginshop a burly boy, larger than we (I say "we," but we were seldom together, so I will change the narrative to "I," "myself," as the victim of the drama), and throw me down, kick and cuff me and rub my face in the dust. When I came crying to my home without supplies I was sent back again, and my older brothers said, "Why don't you boys lick the brute?" and this we determined to do. Thomas and I laid out a plan of action for the defeat of our enemy worthy of Cæsar himself. We prepared an ambush. Thomas ran along the hill-side and hid himself in the bushes opposite the home of our enemy. I took my basket and went up the road as though I were going to the grocery, and I whistled by the way. The sight of me and the sound of my whistle was, to our foe, as a red rag to a bull: he came rushing at me, yelling like a wild Indian; he knocked me down, began mauling me and rubbing my face in the dust. While busy with me the bully did not see Thomas shooting down the hill-side, as a ball from a cannon. When he was struck by this human missile, he went bowling over and over in the dust of the roadway. I jumped up and joined Thomas, who was sitting on our fallen foe, giving him a taste of his own medicine. We walloped him with our fists; we rubbed his face into the grit of the roadway; we kicked him and cuffed him and sent him bleeding and yelling to the shelter of the saloon, while we ran up into the woods and scurried home, inflated with the joy of victory. But our joy was shortlived.

While Thomas and I were washing away the evidences

of our conflict, the father of our defeated foe came raging into our yard and told our mother that we had nearly killed his boy and he was going to have the law on us. Our accuser so frightened our poor mother that, without waiting to hear our side of the case, she dragged us, her own boys, into the woodshed and gave us the whipping of our lives, leaving our bodies burning with the stripings of her whip and our souls burning with a sense of injustice.

When our brothers came home in the evening and our mother learned the truth in the case her heart was broken with sorrow and remorse. She put us to bed, sponged our burning bodies with cool water, rubbed them with soothingoil and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, begged our pardon.

Our elder brothers went down to the home of the father of our enemy and so frightened him with threats of the law that he took his woman, his boy and his brood of children, his meagre household stuff, and trekked away to the westward and the victory remained with Thomas and myself. Our dear mother never forgave herself this act of injustice. Years afterward, when visiting me in New York, she recalled this event and once more asked my pardon. I said, "Never mind, Mother dear; if I got one whipping which I did not deserve I am sure I escaped a hundred which I did deserve"; and my mother said, smiling through her tears, "I guess that's so, my son." So we kissed and agreed to forget.

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