sity. This was my ambition, and it never wavered no matter
what I was doing. No University, it seemed to me, could be more
admirably, situated, and as I sauntered about it, charmed with its fine
lawns and trees and beautiful lakes, and saw the students going and
coming with their books, and occasionally practising with a theodolite
in measuring distances, I thought that if I could only join them it
would be the greatest joy of life. I was desperately hungry and thirsty
for knowledge and willing to endure anything to get it.

One day I chanced to meet a student who had noticed my inventions at
the Fair and now recognized me. And when I said, "You are fortunate
fellows to be allowed to study in this beautiful place. I wish I could
join you." "Well, why don't you?" he asked. "I haven't money enough,"
I said. "Oh, as to money," he reassuringly explained, "very little is
required. I presume you're able to enter the Freshman class, and you
can board yourself as quite a number of us do at a cost of about a
dollar a week. The baker and milkman come every day. You can live on
bread and milk." Well, I thought, maybe I have money enough for at
least one beginning term. Anyhow I couldn't help trying.

With fear and trembling, overladen with ignorance, I called on
Professor Stirling, the Dean of the Faculty, who was then Acting
President, presented my case, and told him how far I had got on with
my studies at home, and that I hadn't been to school since leaving
Scotland at the age of eleven years, excepting one short term of a
couple of months at a district school, because I could not be spared
from the farm work. After hearing my story, the kind professor
welcomed me to the glorious University--next, it seemed to me, to the
Kingdom of Heaven. After a few weeks in the preparatory department I
entered the Freshman class. In Latin I found that one of the books in
use I had already studied in Scotland. So, after an interruption of a
dozen years, I began my Latin over again where I had left off; and,
strange to say, most of it came back to me, especially the grammar
which I had committed to memory at the Dunbar Grammar School.

During the four years that I was in the University, I earned enough in
the harvest-fields during the long summer vacations to carry me
through the balance of each year, working very hard, cutting with a
cradle four acres of wheat a day, and helping to put it in the shock.
But, having to buy books and paying, I