at until they came to
Cincinnati, then a city of fourteen thousand inhabitants.

Through the assistance of his eldest son, the editor, Mr. Powers was
enabled to secure a farm not far from Cincinnati, and removing his
family to it, began the task of clearing and cultivating it.
Unfortunately for the new-comers, the farm was located on the edge of a
pestilential marsh, the poisonous exhalations of which soon brought the
whole family down with the ague. Mr. Powers the elder died from this
disease, and Hiram was ill and disabled from it for a whole year. The
family was broken up and scattered, and our hero, incapable of
performing hard work so soon after his sickness, obtained a place in a
produce store in Cincinnati, his duty being to watch the principal road
by which the farmers' wagons, laden with grain and corn whisky, came
into the city, and to inform the men in charge of them that they could
obtain better prices for their produce from his employers than from any
other merchants in the city. It was also a part of his duty to help to
roll the barrels from the wagons to the store. He made a very good
"drummer," and gave satisfaction to his employers, but as the concern
soon broke up, he was again without employment.

His brother, the editor, now came to his assistance, and made a bargain
with the landlord of a hotel in the city to establish a reading-room at
his hotel. The landlord was to provide the room and obtain a few paying
subscribers; the editor was to stock it with his exchange newspapers,
and Hiram was to be put in charge of it and receive what could be made
by it. The reading-room was established, but as the landlord failed to
comply with his agreement, Powers was forced to abandon the undertaking.

[Illustration: POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS.]

"About that time," said he, in relating his early life to the Rev. Dr.
Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously for the means of
living, I fell in with a worthy man, a clock-maker and organ-builder,
who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put
me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with
what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill.
I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of
getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in
mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was
constantly struggling. I would sometimes