the fireplace was nearly as wide as the cabin. The two doors on
opposite sides permitted the horse, dragging the backlog, to enter at
one and then to go out at the other. Of course, the solid floor of split
logs defied injury from such treatment.

The skillet and the Dutch oven were used instead of the cook stove to
bake the pone or johnny cake, to parch the corn, or to fry the venison
which was then obtainable in the wilds of Ohio.

A curtain at the farther end of the cabin marked the confines of a
bedchamber for the "old folks." The older children climbed the ladder
nailed to the wall to get to the loft floored with loose clapboards that
rattled when trodden upon. The straw beds were so near the roof that
the patter of the rain made music to the ear, and the spray of the
falling water would often baptize the "tow-heads" left uncovered.

[Illustration: Bringing in the backlog.]

Our diet was simple, and the mush pot was a great factor in our home
life. A large, heavy iron pot was hung on the crane in the chimney
corner, where the mush would slowly bubble and sputter over or near a
bed of oak coals for half the afternoon. And such mush!--always made
from yellow corn meal and cooked three hours or more. This, eaten with
plenty of fresh, rich milk, furnished the supper for the children. Tea?
Not to be thought of. Sugar? It was too expensive--cost fifteen to
eighteen cents a pound, and at a time when it took a week's labor to
earn as much money as a day's labor would earn now. Cheap molasses we
had sometimes, but not often, meat not more than once a day, but eggs in
abundance.

Everything father had to sell was low-priced, while everything mother
must buy at the store was high. Wheat brought twenty-five cents a
bushel; corn, fifteen cents; pork, two and two and a half cents a pound,
with bacon sometimes used as fuel by reckless, racing steamboat
captains of the Ohio and Mississippi.

My earliest recollection, curiously enough, is of my schoolboy days,
although I had so few. I was certainly not five years old when a
drunken, brutal teacher undertook to spank me because I did not speak a
word plainly. That is the first fight of which I have any recollection.
I could hardly remember that but for the witnesses, one of them my
oldest brother, who saw the struggle. My teeth, he said, did excellent
work and drew blood quite freely.

What a spectacle--a half-drunken teacher maltreating his pupils! But
then, that was the ti