This moderation established Charlie Naylor as the most popular teacher that community had ever known, ended the Christmas treat, and almost entirely ended corporal punishment in our public schools.

My father enlarged his farm. When I was twelve he was raising corn and wheat for shipment, and I remember driving a two-horse wagon loaded with thirty bushels a distance of twenty-five miles to Lafayette. There I saw Perdue's Block, the first brick building I had ever seen. It was celebrated throughout that part of Indiana, yet it was but two stories high and had only three stores!

Father had three permanent farm hands, Matt and John McAleer, refined and fairly educated Irishmen, and Bill Smith, a partially degenerated and cruel American. When the Mexican War broke out, all three wanted to enlist. The nearest recruiting office was Crawfordsville, and I went with them. The recruiting officer had stacked in front of his office many old-fashioned flint-lock muskets, which so excited me that I begged the recruiting officer to take me as a drummer, although I was but thirteen! He replied that he would, provided I could get my parents' consent.

Father met us when we returned and asked the men if they had enlisted. Matt and John said "yes." Then father asked Bill, “did you enlist?" "No, Jim,” he replied, “I did not. You should see those big guns. They carry a ball as big as your thumb and three buckshots, and have spears on the end of them that long, and just as keen -!"

Matt and John served through the war, but John died of yellow fever coming home. Matt remained with father many years. All this war experience so inspired me that I persuaded father to apply to our Congressman, Dan Mace, for an appointment to West Point. He replied that he would have given it to me, but that he had already nominated another.

My father was an ardent Democrat of the Jackson type, and when Jackson died he felt for a long time that the country was lost. Although self-educated, he was a great reader, and

a very progressive man. Our first corn we shelled by hand, but later my father bought the first corn sheller in the county. He got the first traveling traction threshing machine, which threshed the wheat from the shocks in the field. Formerly we threshed it from the sheafs on the barn floor with a "flail"two sticks tied together, with which the thresher beat the kernels from the straw. Father also purchased the first reaper in that part of the country. He prospered above his neighbors because he was indefatigable in industry, ambition and economy, but he met with a great sorrow, as I did, in the loss of his wife, my mother, when I was fourteen. Before he was very happy and cheerful, singing and whistling much; but I never heard him do either after my mother's death.

Being the oldest child, I was called on more than the rest to care for the younger ones. Shortly after my mother's death my father asked us to make a great sacrifice to keep the family together. He would not marry again, and it would be impossible to have a woman come to care for us. If I would not assume the duties of a mother with Mary, thirteen, and Jane, eleven, to do the housework, he would be obliged to bind the children out to relatives and neighbors. We promised to make this sacrifice, and while I thought then and for a long time after that it was a great wrong, I now know it was the best thing that ever happened to me. The responsibility, together with the instruction and admonitions that I had received, principally from my mother's knee, prepared me for future responsibilities. My father gave me much advice as to the obligations resting on all to do for those coming after him what those who had gone before had done for him. Once, traveling a good road, well prepared to keep vehicles out of the mud, he said, "Now, Anson, somebody built this road for you; you must build some for those who are to come after you."

In 1851 my father had opened his farm to one hundred and fifty acres. Fertilizing it with the ashes of the consumed forest, he raised a most extraordinary crop, three thousand

bushels of wheat and thirty-fve Lundred bushels of corn. He sold the wheat for one dollar and the corn for sixty cents per bushel, which made him a rich man for those days. Then he told my sister Mary and me that he was going to prepare us to fight the battle of life by giving us an education, which he and our mother had not had

So in September, 1832 be sent us by rail a five or six days journey, to Charlotteville Academy, in Schoharie County, New York.

We made seven changes in the five or six days' journey to Canajoharie, New York. The legal rights of railroads were so involved that the projectors had not devised a means to construct interstate or through-city railroads. In none of the towns was there a joint depot; in most we hired a country wagon to carry our trunks from one depot to the other. At Erie there were two depots, because the road to the east was of a different gauge from the road to the west!

I mention all this in detail that those who are so dissatisfied with the beautiful and efficient methods of railroad transportation in these days may realize what they would be up against if the Rockefellers, Carnegies and other benefactors like them had not made these great improvements possible. At Canajoharie we took the stage to Charlotteville, thirty miles distant, where we arrived in a snowstorm.

My father had entrusted to me a large amount of Indiana money to deposit with the treasurer of the academy. On presenting it to Mr. Archer, he exclaimed: "Why, what does your father mean by sending us this 'wild cat money! You could not buy a breakfast anywhere in New York with it! However, since you have come so far, I will send it to New York and see what can be done." He finally exchanged it and put it to my father's credit.

CHARLOTTEVILLE ACADEMY

At the academy were eight hundred students, male and female, occupying separate buildings, the chapel and dining room being between the boys' and girls' buildings, and the only place where they met. In the town, the girls were allowed to walk only on certain streets and the boys on others. My father equipped me with what he considered suitable clothing for my new environment, but what was fashionable in the West was a matter of ridicule in New York, particularly my hat, a tall, square-crowned beaver. I wore a large moustache, had black hair and rather dark complexion, and I was a curiosity to the students, my dialect and vocabulary being different from the Yankee pupils. I was soon nicknamed the "Russian Ambassador from the Woolly West," and my good nature was somewhat tried by the ridicule. However, I made the best of it, had plenty of company always, and my room was visited perhaps as much as that of any other student.

I had made myself a small box with a lock, in which I kept some personal things, among them some correspondence with a girl cousin of mine in Ohio, whose letters were very sentimental.

One evening, I found the son of the professor of mathematics, Ferguson, about my own age and size, sitting in my room. He began to quote some of the silly expressions of this young lady. I asked him if he had read my letters. When he said he had, I invited him into the hall and blackened both his eyes. He called for help, but the watchman came very slowly! Ferguson was unpopular with the employes and the watchman told me afterward he wished he had let me alone a little longer. The boy reported the incident to his father and the élder Ferguson, the second officer of the academy, sent for me in the absence of President Alonso Flack. He threatened to dismiss me because I should have reported to him, but said

instead he would report the case to the president when he returned. I replied, to use a present day expression, that it was a non-justiciable case.

Later Mr. Flack sent for me and I told him what had happened. Mr. Flack pondered and then said: "Mr. Mills, I am very sorry that you got into this trouble, but, had I been in your situation I would probably have done as you did. That will do but don't let it occur again."

At Charlotteville I met two young revolutionary refugees from Cuba, Miguel Castillanos and Juan Govin. Castillanos had been captured and imprisoned in a fortress in Ciuta, Africa, but escaped. By mutual arrangement, we taught each other our respective languages and I thus had an early acquaintance with Spanish.

After a year, during which both my sister and myself got along very well, Father sent me a letter from Mr. Mace, the Congressman, saying that his appointee had failed and that he would nominate me for West Point. The nomination came and Father had me come home until the opening of the academy in June.

Prior to leaving Charlotteville, I obtained from Secretary of State, William L. Marcy, a passport with the view of going to Cuba when I had finished my course, but my appointment to West Point changed that.