roy and the timber as well. In their places great
barns and comfortable houses dot the landscape as far as the eye can
reach.

One habit that we boys acquired on that trip stuck to us all our lives,
until the brother was lost at sea. When we followed behind the wagon, as
we did part of the time, each took the name of the horse on his side of
the road. I was "Tip," on the off side; while brother was "Top," on the
near side. Tip and Top, a span of big, fat, gray horses that would run
away "at the drop of the hat," were something to be proud of. This habit
of Oliver's walking on the near side and my walking on the off continued
for years and through many a mile of travel.

[Illustration: Plowing through the oak grubs on the Wabash.]

CHAPTER TWO

BOYHOOD DAYS IN OLD INDIANA

WHEN we reached Indiana we settled down on a rented farm. Times were
hard with us, and for a season all the members of the household were
called upon to contribute their mite. I drove four yoke of oxen for
twenty-five cents a day, and during part of the time boarded at home at
that. This was on the Wabash, where oak grubs grew, my father often
said, "as thick as hair on a dog's back;" but they were really not so
thick as that.

We used to force the big plowshare through and cut grubs as big as my
wrist. When we saw a patch of them ahead, I would halloo and shout at
the poor oxen and lay on the whip; but father wouldn't let me swear at
them. Let me say here that I later discontinued this foolish fashion of
driving, and always talked to my oxen in a conversational tone and used
the whip sparingly.

That reminds me of an experience I had later, in the summer when I was
nineteen. Uncle John Kinworthy--a good soul he was, and an ardent
Quaker--lived neighbor to us in Bridgeport, Indiana. One day I went to
his house with three yoke of oxen to haul into place a heavy beam for a
cider-press. The oxen had to be driven through the front dooryard in
full sight and hearing of Uncle John's wife and three buxom Quaker
girls, who either stood in the door or poked their heads out of the
window.

The cattle would not go through the front yard past those girls. They
kept doubling back, first on one side and then on the other. Uncle
Johnny, noticing that I did not swear at the cattle, and attributing the
absence of oaths to the presence of ladies, or maybe thinking, like a
good many others, that oxen could not be driven without swearing at
them,