and trial, united to the comic humor
and pathos of the Irish, and then grown wild in the woods among their
own New England mountains."

[Illustration: The First Battle.]

Such was the Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism of that period.

Other cheerful influences were also at work in the two villages that
comprised the town of Fowler. The only house of worship in the town
proper was a Universalist church, and the people were compelled for the
most part, notwithstanding their various creeds, to worship in a common
temple where the asperities of sectarian difference had no existence.

Ward Glazier, at that time, was an adherent of Universalism, while his
wife held evangelical views. But he was ever ready to ride with his wife
and son to the church of her choice at Gouverneur, a distance of six
miles, and returning, chat with them pleasantly of the sermon, the
crops, the markets and the gossip of the town.

In truth, young Willard's early home was a good and pleasant one, and
having learned, under his mother's careful training, to read exceedingly
well, for a boy of his age, by the time he reached his fourth year he
became noted for his inquiring disposition, his quiet manner, and a
quaint habit of making some practical application of the "wise saws"
with which his mother had stored his juvenile mind.

The result was that up to this period of his existence he was an
old-fashioned little fellow, and somehow had acquired the sobriquet of
the "little deacon."

At about five years of age, however, a change took place in the boy.

The bird that flutters and twitters in the parent nest is a very
different thing from the emancipated fledgeling, feeling its newly
acquired power of flight, and soaring far up and out into the woods and
over the fields; and the boy whose experience of life is confined to
the household of his parents, is not less different from the lad who has
gone beyond it into the bustle and turmoil of that epitomized world,--a
public school.

Little Willard, like other youths, was thrown into this new sphere of
action suddenly, and without any adequate idea of what was there
expected of him. The first day passed as all first days at school pass,
not in study, but in looking on and becoming accustomed to the
surroundings, himself in turn being the subject of scrutiny by his
school-mates, as the "new boy." The day did not end, however, without
its incident.

Young Willard as soon as he had made his bow to his n