s. Naturally, they were soaked and chilled
through, but they all bore the experience with a gay philosophy.

When we reached Big Rapids we dressed for the ball, and, as in those
days it was customary to change one's gown again at midnight, I had an
opportunity to burst on the assemblage in two costumes--the second made
of bedroom chintz, with a low neck and short sleeves. We danced the
"money musk," and the "Virginia reel," "hoeing her down" (which means
changing partners) in true pioneer style. I never missed a dance at this
or any subsequent affair, and I was considered the gayest and the most
tireless young person at our parties until I became a Methodist minister
and dropped such worldly vanities. The first time I preached in my home
region all my former partners came to hear me, and listened with wide,
understanding, reminiscent smiles which made it very hard for me to keep
soberly to my text.

In the near future I had reason to regret the extravagant expenditure of
my first earnings. For my second year of teaching, in the same school, I
was to receive five dollars a week and to pay my own board. I selected a
place two miles and a half from the school-house, and was promptly asked
by my host to pay my board in advance. This, he explained, was due to no
lack of faith in me; the money would enable him to go "outside" to work,
leaving his family well supplied with provisions. I allowed him to go
to the school committee and collect my board in advance, at the rate of
three dollars a week for the season. When I presented myself at my new
boarding-place, however, two days later, I found the house nailed up and
deserted; the man and his family had departed with my money, and I was
left, as my committeemen sympathetically remarked, "high and dry." There
were only two dollars a week coming to me after that, so I walked back
and forth between my home and my school, almost four miles, twice a day;
and during this enforced exercise there was ample opportunity to reflect
on the fleeting joy of riches.

In the mean time war had been declared. When the news came that Fort
Sumter had been fired on, and that Lincoln had called for troops, our
men were threshing. There was only one threshing-machine in the region
at that time, and it went from place to place, the farmers doing their
threshing whenever they could get the machine. I remember seeing a
man ride up on horseback, shouting out Lincoln's demand for troops and
explaining t