le encouragement for the effort to overcome other
obstacles. Money _may_ be only a _representative_ of value, but its
absence operates marvellously like the want of the value itself, and the
primitive people of those days, and especially that class to which the
schoolmaster belonged, had a habit, however illogical, of considering it
a desirable commodity, _per se_.

All these impediments, however, could, in the course of time, be
conquered: the country was improving in social tone; parents must
eventually take some pride even in the accomplishments they despised;
and patience and gentleness, intermingled, now and then, with a little
wholesome severity, will ultimately subdue the most stubborn spirit. As
for the pecuniary difficulty, it was, as the political economists will
tell us, only the absence of a medium at the worst: and, in its stead,
the master could receive boarding, clothing, and the agricultural
products of the country. So many barrels of corn, or bushels of wheat,
"per quarter," might not be so conveniently handled, but were quite as
easy to be counted, as an equal number of dollars; and this primitive
mode of payment is even yet practised in many rural districts, perhaps,
in both the east and west. To counter-balance its inconvenience of bulk,
this "currency" possessed a double advantage over the more refined
"medium of exchange" now in use: it was not liable to counterfeits, and
the bank from which it issued was certain not to "break."

So the schoolmaster was not to be deterred from pursuing his honorable
calling, even by the difficulties incident to half-organized
communities. Indeed, teaching was the resort, at least temporary, of
four fifths of the educated, and nearly an equal number of the
uneducated young men, who came to the west: for certainly that
proportion of both classes arrived in the country, without money to
support, friends to encourage, or pride to deter them.

They were almost all what western people call "Yankees"--born and bred
east of the Hudson: descendants of the sturdy puritans--and
distinguished by the peculiarities of that strongly-marked people, in
personal appearance, language, manners, and style and tone of thought.
Like the peddlers, they were generally on the sunny side of thirty, full
of the hopeful energy which belongs to that period of life, and only
submitting to the labors and privations of the present, because through
these they looked to the future for better and