nt. Later, as he
descended still farther into the hole we were making, he shoveled the
earth into buckets and passed them up to me, I passing them on to my
sister, who was now pressed into service. When the excavation was deep
enough we made the wall of slabs of wood, roughly joined together. I
recall that well with calm content. It was not a thing of beauty, but
it was a thoroughly practical well, and it remained the only one we had
during the twelve years the family occupied the cabin.

During our first year there was no school within ten miles of us, but
this lack failed to sadden Harry or me. We had brought with us from
Lawrence a box of books, in which, in winter months, when our outdoor
work was restricted, we found much comfort. They were the only books
in that part of the country, and we read them until we knew them all by
heart. Moreover, father sent us regularly the New York Independent, and
with this admirable literature, after reading it, we papered our walls.
Thus, on stormy days, we could lie on the settle or the floor and read
the Independent over again with increased interest and pleasure.

Occasionally father sent us the Ledger, but here mother drew a definite
line. She had a special dislike for that periodical, and her severest
comment on any woman was that she was the type who would "keep a dog,
make saleratus biscuit, and read the New York Ledger in the daytime."
Our modest library also contained several histories of Greece and Rome,
which must have been good ones, for years later, when I entered college,
I passed my examination in ancient history with no other preparation
than this reading. There were also a few arithmetics and algebras, a
historical novel or two, and the inevitable copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
whose pages I had freely moistened with my tears.

When the advantages of public education were finally extended to me,
at thirteen, by the opening of a school three miles from our home,
I accepted them with growing reluctance. The teacher was a spinster
forty-four years of age and the only genuine "old maid" I have ever met
who was not a married woman or a man. She was the real thing, and
her name, Prudence Duncan, seemed the fitting label for her rigidly
uncompromising personality. I graced Prudence's school for three months,
and then left it at her fervid request. I had walked six miles a day
through trackless woods and Western blizzards to get what she could
give me, but she had little to