ilt at
Darlington, Pa., the "Old Stone Academy" for the education of young men,
having obtained the necessary funds by traveling on horseback throughout
Pennsylvania and eastward even to Newburyport, Mass.

This seminary of learning was conducted on lines of the utmost economy
to meet the needs of the boys living on the frontier. The tuition was
only three dollars a year and the charge for board was seventy-five
cents a week. The food was simple. For breakfast, bread, butter, and
coffee; for dinner, bread, meat, and sauce; for supper, bread and milk.
The only variation allowed in this bill of fare was the occasional
omission of sauce or coffee.

[The Old Stone Academy]

At the close of a summer day in 1818, Thomas Hughes was riding horseback
through Trumbull county. The dust on the highway deadened the sound of
his horse's feet. While passing a log cabin, half hidden from the road
by intervening trees and shrubs, he heard the plaintive voice of a woman
who was in the garden, out of sight. The clergyman stopped his horse and
listened. He heard the woman earnestly praying that some way might be
opened for her children to obtain such education as should fit them for
the duties of life. Riding on, the clergyman inquired at the next house
regarding the inmates of the log cabin. He was informed that a Mr.
McGuffey lived there. Turning back he sought the prayerful mother and
learned from her the circumstances of the family. The doors of the "Old
Stone Academy" were opened to William H. McGuffey and he there obtained
his first start in a preparation for college. But his labor could not be
wholly spared on the farm so lately won from the surrounding forest. He
worked in the fields in summer, continuing his studies and walked many
miles once a week to recite his lessons to a kindly clergyman.

W.H. McGuffey's father was too poor to aid his son in obtaining a
collegiate education, and the latter soon turned to teaching as a means
of obtaining money to support himself in college. When prepared for
college he went back to his native county and entered Washington
College. He was in his twenty-sixth year when he graduated with
distinguished honors from that institution.

It was at Washington College that W.H. McGuffey first met with a great
teacher and former of character,--Dr. Andrew Wylie, then the president.
It was considered by Dr. McGuffey one of the most fortunate events of
his life that he came at that time under the influ