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I was born Saturday, April 23, 1803, in the town of Cumberland, Providence County, Rhode Island, on a farm inherited from my paternal ancestors, and lying, partly in the state named, and partly in Massachusetts. The dwelling-house and accompanying buildings were on the Rhode Island territory, about fifteen miles north-northwest from Providence, three in the same direction from Cumberland Hill, and four east of Woonsocket. The locality was then, as now, a comparatively obscure, rural one, remote from any populous center, and inhabited, chiefly, by plain, hard-working, economical tillers of the soil.

My parents were Ariel and Edilda (Tower) Ballou. The former was the son of Ariel, who was the son of James, who was the son of James, who was the son of Maturin Ballou, the immigrant ancestor of the family and a co-proprietor with Roger Williams in the first settlement of Providence Plantations, in 1646. My mother was the eldest daughter of Levi and Mary (Whipple) Tower, natives of Cumberland, both of whom I remember well. She departed this life in my early youth; he, several years later. She was a woman of portly presence, natural dignity, strong common sense, and great benignity, without the slightest affectation. In her old-fashioned way she was at once commanding and genial. I have a vivid recollection of the affectionate hospitality which I always received from her in my childhood visits. My grandfather Tower was not her equal in all these excellent qualities, yet a respectable man and citizen. He had a tall, well-built frame, a somewhat excitable temperament, a mechanical genius for work in wood and metals, and a penchant for mineral discoveries and experimenta-tion, though he gained thereby neither profit nor popularity.

My paternal grandparents, Ariel and Jerusha (Slack) Ballou, had both finished their earthly course before my birth. I have therefore no knowl-edge of them except what has come to me in scanty records and traditions. They reared a large family, and, from all I can learn, deservedly enjoyed the respect of the social circle in which they moved. My grandfather had the misfortune to be sadly crippled during the latter portion of his life, in consequence of mercurial medication injudiciously administered in a severe illness. He was long unable to walk, and could only move about in a chair specially fitted to his case. My grandmother on that side survived him many years. They have always been represented to me as industrious, frugal, sensible, worthy persons, ranking with the better class of their rustic contemporaries. Whether or not they were members of the Baptist church in their neighborhood I have never learned, but think it probable.

My father's children were eight in number: six by his first wife, Lucina (Comstock) Ballou, and two by his second, Edilda (Tower) Ballou. Those by Lucina were: Rozina, Abigail, Cyrus, Arnold, Sarah, and Alfred; by Edilda, myself and Ariel, M.D. Rozina married Nathan Arnold and died December 5, 1825, leaving one son and two twin daughters. Abigail married Davis Cook, both now deceased, having had numerous children and grandchildren. Cyrus married Susannah Ballou, a third cousin, and died March 7, 1816, leaving two sons who have had children. Arnold married Lorinda Bates and died November 27, 1816. A posthumous daughter married and became the mother of several children. Alfred married Matilda Cook, both having recently deceased, leaving children and grandchildren. Ariel, my own younger brother, an eminent physician, married Hannah Norton and had several children, of whom only two daughters survive; their mother having passed away some years since. Of my own family I shall speak at length in due time and place.

As yet I have been unable to trace my ancestry further back than Maturin Ballou, who was at Providence in 1646. I have a faint hope of ascertaining his birthplace and progenitors. I find his Christian name and surname both spelled with a various orthography in the old Rhode Island records, but his descendants have for a long time written the two as above. Tradition holds him to have been of French extraction, belonging to a Huguenot family and coming to this country from England, whither many of that persecuted sect fled some generations since. There is little doubt that such was the case, but for lack of reliable information I must be content to commence my pedigree with him.

I have often been taken or mistaken for a son of Rev. Hosea Ballou, a distinguished Universalist clergyman of his time, and have frequently been asked what our relationship was. He was a third cousin of my father, our common immigrant ancestor, Maturin Ballou, having had three sons, who lived to rear offspring: John, James, and Peter. His descent ran thus: Maturin(1), John(2), Peter(3), Rev. Maturin(4), Rev. Hosea(5). Mine was as follows: Maturin(1), James(2), James(3), Ariel(4), Ariel(5), Adin(6).

James Ballou, my great-great grandfather, settled in what was then Providence, later Smithfield, and now Lincoln, Rhode Island, and founded a homestead, still owned, I believe, by one of his descendants. It was less than a mile southerly from the village of Manville, on Blackstone River, and about a half mile west of Albion. He was a very capable, enterprising man, becoming a great landholder in his later years. He had five sons: James, Nathaniel, Obadiah, Samuel, and Nehemiah. He endowed them all with handsome farms, or at least with tracts of land that became handsome farms. To Samuel he gave his home place, and to Nehemiah an ample estate in what was then Gloucester, but is now Burrillville, Rhode Island. Each of his three older sons, James, Nathaniel, and Obadiah, he settled on wild or nearly wild lands, purchased by him, on the northerly side of Blackstone, then called Pawtucket River, within the boundaries of territory for a long time in dispute between the three colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Neither of the colonies knew exactly where their respective lines were, but each laid strong claims to the section involved. After many years a settlement was effected, "Attleboro Gore," as it was called, being surrendered to Rhode Island, the Legislature of which, in 1746, incorporated it with its inhabitants as a township bearing the name of Cumberland.

In l713 James Ballou conveyed the lands specified by gift deeds to the three sons named, who soon after settled their families upon them—their several patrimonies lying adjacent to each other and constituting "the Ballou neighborhood," as it was for a long time designated. This was originally more than half a square mile in extent, and, with inherited rights in common lands adjoining, ultimately covered an area of nearly a whole mile square. All this section of country and its landmarks were familiar to me in my youth, and are still fresh in my remembrance. "Beacon Pole Hill" received its name from a tall mast with a crane attached, from which was suspended a kettle designed to be filled with tar or other combustibles and lighted on occasions, as an alarm signal during the Revolutionary War and as a summons for "Minute Men" from far and wide to reinforce the Rhode Island army. "Iron Rock Meadow" is supposed to have been originally a beaver pond. It contained forty acres and was the first purchase made by James Ballou, senior, in the vicinity. For many years it bore splendid crops of nutritious grass, which finally ran out or was supplanted by a comparatively worthless kind. Its name was derived from "Iron Rock Hill," an elevation near by which is very much of a natural curiosity. It seems to have been raised to the height of a hundred feet or more by some volcanic upheaval, and is largely composed of a rich iron ore, with magnetic qualities, amalgamated with solid rock. Nothing of the kind is to be found within hundreds of miles of it.

A little north of this remarkable hill the early settlers built a small house of worship, known in all that region as the "Ballou Meeting House." It has undergone successive repairs from generation to generation, and though occupied only occasionally, in the mild season of the year, remains in its rude simplicity, an interesting memorial of the olden time and its characteristic piety. A few rods southeasterly from it is the ancient "burying ground," where sleep the mortal remains of the original worshipers and many of their descendants, some with sculptured monuments, others with common stones from the field, while many are scarcely marked at all amid the wild grass and brush. It is a place for the study of moss-covered inscriptions and for solemn meditation, especially to a Ballou of the lineage of James. There molder the ashes of my older kindred, and there my father, in my early youth, erected a family tomb, one of the first two built in the enclosure.

"The Ballou Meeting House" was designed for and long occupied by a church of the order called "the Six Principle Baptists"—a small sect hardly known out of Rhode Island, and now almost extinct even there. Elder Abner Ballou, son of Obadiah, was long pastor of this church. He had considerable local celebrity in his day, passing away January 4, 1806, and leaving behind him a venerated memory. In that old Meetinghouse, I first listened with awe to prayer and preaching from the lips of Elder Stephen Place—the successor, and I think the last successor, of Elder Ballou. In my youthful veneration I worshipped him almost as God, certainly as one of God's best human representatives. But as I grew older, my reverential estimation became modified somewhat by the criticisms of middle-aged people who knew him in the common walks of life, and who were not too good to reveal their discoveries that he was not wholly above the general weaknesses of human nature. How few of us escape this judgment of our more intimate contemporaries!

In this immediate vicinity the descendants of James, Nathaniel, and Obadiah Ballou multiplied greatly and for a long time constituted a major-ity of the population. At length they began to scatter by emigration, till now but few families of the name remain. One of the first to leave was James, a brother of my grandfather. He had many children, most of whom settled with him in Richmond, New Hampshire. Among his sons were James, long famous in that region as an astrologer and fortune teller, and Silas, the rustic poet. Rev. Eli Ballou, of Vermont, is the descendant of another emigrant family in the line of Nathaniel, the second in age of the three Cumberland patriarchs.

It was in the Ballou neighborhood above described, about a mile north of Iron Rock Hill, that I was born, as stated, on an estate derived by inheritance from James Ballou, my great grandfather and a grandson of the common ancestor. It is now owned by the heirs of my brother Alfred. My father at the time was about forty-three and my mother thirty-two years of age. My mother informed me that my birth was one of uncommon peril both to her and me; that I was a lean, feeble, unpromising babe; that for several weeks I seemed more likely to die than to live; and that I was six months old before she could have me seen without some feeling of motherly mortification. Thenceforth, however, I grew healthy, ruddy, and handsome, so that she was no longer ashamed of me. On the contrary, to use her own homely language, "I was proud to turn you out in company by the side of anybody's baby, and often got complimented for your comeliness."

Nevertheless, my early childhood, as I learned from the same source, was subject to frequent attacks of illness, some of them quite severe, seriously threatening at times my life. Moreover, I seem to have been anything but a lymphatic, quiet, good-natured child. I did my part at fretting and crying, and was indebted to my kind mother's indulgence in carrying me about the house while at her work, for escaping my father's hand of discipline, after he deemed me old enough to behave better than I sometimes did. So she laughingly told me in after years. He was of the old school in regard to family government, and believed in suppressing bad humor occasionally with a little wholesome severity. I have no doubt I sometimes tried his patience when he was weary with toil, for he was a very hard-working man. Besides, I remember when quite a small boy scarcely three years of age, being called by the housemaid, "a little mud-wasp."

It did not mend my temper much that the older members of the household were roguish enough to take delight in hectoring me. They could excite my mirth or my irritability at very little cost to themselves, and they were fond of opportunities. While still a mere frockling their various pranks were often played upon me and became indelibly stamped on my memory. Among the worst I call to mind was that of being held under a bush covered with rose-bugs; the bush being meanwhile violently shaken till my hair, neck, breast, and, indeed, my entire body under my clothing, were alive with the hateful creatures. I had always felt and often evinced a great dread of these insects, and at the time referred to I screamed and ran for my mother's help in a very lively, and, to an observer, amusing manner. I was frightened and maddened to the utmost, while half a dozen of my tormentors shouted with merriment. It was exquisite sport to them, but intolerable vexation to me. Nothing malicious was intended by these mischievous teasings, but I am sure they made my excitable passions worse.

In those early years, I also had my full share of casualties. My father owned a sawmill and I barely escaped drowning one day in its flume. My brother, Alfred, four years older than myself, persuaded me to attempt following him over a tottling plank or slab from one of the mill doors across the flume to the dam beyond. The saw was running with my father in charge. I was a poor balancer and hence when part way over tum-bled into the water. My father got the alarm just in time to save me. I was, at the moment, several feet under water and being drawn rapidly into the current that rushed through the open gate. The mill had a great head and fall, so that in a single minute more I should probably have been carried through the wheel, a lifeless mangled mass of flesh and bones. I was not so far gone as quite to lose my breath, and presently was able to be led home. I still wore long clothes and remember the sorrowful figure I cut as I draggled along tremulously some twenty-five rods, muttering as I went incoherent denunciations against that plaguy old slab and flume. I was welcomed to the fond maternal bosom as a child rescued from the very jaws of death.

Not long afterwards, while sporting with a playmate, I fell into a stone sluiceway which my father was building and broke my arm. Dr. Abraham Mason, our family physician, who resided at Cumberland Hill, was sent for to set the fractured bone. By the time he arrived the process had been rendered painful by inflammation and swelling. I could not easily endure the operation or soon forget it, though it was so successfully done that I wholly recovered in a few weeks. As I grew older and was put to business in and about the farm buildings, I experienced plenty of throwings from horses, kicks from skittish cattle, and other mishaps incident to boyhood in that sphere of life.

Notwithstanding my natural sensitiveness and susceptibility to irritation by small provocations, I was generally easily governed. I was neither turbulent nor stubborn, but yielded prompt submission to authority and responded heartily to kind treatment. I was readily persuaded by reasonable appeals, but stung to the quick by personal taunt and reproach. My mother said that she never used the rod upon me but once and then very lightly. It was before my remembrance, in my second year. I seemed to have been seized with a strange freak of destructiveness in the way of throwing things into the fire. She had chided me again and again for my misconduct, but in vain. When left to myself, article after article went rapidly into the flames. At length, as she told me, she "got a little tingler," and, upon a repetition of the offense one day, gave me a few touches with it. I hopped about, screamed loudly, and was effectually cured. When a half-grown-up boy, I used to see a checkered linen handkerchief about the house with one corner gone. I was curious enough to inquire after a time, how that came to be. "It is a piece of your work," said my mother, and then told me the story with good-natured glee.

My father was stern and authoritative in his discipline, yet I can recollect only one whipping from him. This I shared with my brother Ariel when we had become old enough to drop corn, etc., in planting time. We had driven the cows to pasture one morning and instead of returning directly home where we were wanted for service in the field, strolled off to an old well and amused ourselves for a long time in throwing stones into the water below. Hearing the old conch shell blown, which we understood to be an extra summons to the house, we hastened thither and were told by our mother that she did not know what would happen to us, "for your father has been calling you at the top of his voice, and as you did not come has gone planting alone quite out of patience with you." We hastened into the field, a few rods distant, where he was doing our proper work, with a few apple tree sprouts stuck in his vest. He had not many words for us, but enough smart blows to make the impression that duty and business must take precedence of amusement in his family. There was no undue severity in this correction, but it was conclusive.

I generally found myself a favorite with my father's employees, indoors and out, of whom he had always more or less. I made myself agree-able, and sometimes serviceable to them, never having a particle of haugh-tiness or contempt to express towards them, even in childish ways, as of an inferior caste. In turn they liked me, and I received frequent acceptable proofs of their good will, either openly or slyly, from manservants and maidservants. Earliest of them all I remember Reuben Purchase, a sturdy, glossy-haired Indian, whose copper color was slightly bleached with the blood of the white race. He took a great liking to me, called me his boy, carried me about pick-a-back with him into the fields or woods, and made quite a big papoose of me. He must have been approaching middle age at the time, and had a family in the general neighborhood. He loved his mug of cider, and stronger drinks moved him occasionally. But he and I were on good terms and he gave me many a little token of his partiality. As I grew older I made successive friends in this line all the way up to manhood, and found my own trifling investments of kindness turn to good account in various ways, as, on a broader scale, I always have through life.

My first remembered attendance on public worship was soon after I donned boy's attire, perhaps as late as the summer of my fifth year. I was rigged out in a new suit of calico, the pants buttoned to the coat in the common fashion of that day, and was led by the hand of my mother a mile on foot to the "Ballou Meeting House." I began to feel of some consequence in the world, but was too bashful to put on pompous airs, and paid reverential attention to the services of the occasion. Elder Stephen Place was the minister. He must have been sixty years of age, had a venerable aspect, and spoke in those sanctified tones of the old-time preacher, which, somehow or other, had a very solemnizing effect upon the younger hearers. I recollect nothing that he said, but he filled me with sublime, though vague, impressions of God, heaven, and hell, and made me feel for a long time afterward that he must be next to Deity.My parents were not then professors of religion and yet were partially religious. The ancient Six Principle Baptist Church was falling into decay, and the members were mostly elderly people. I recall distinctly their solemn countenances, whether in the "Deacon's Seat" or on the hard old pew seats—men and women occupying separate parts of the house—those fathers and mothers in Israel of a generation long since passed away.

The old Burying Ground, too, was a place of almost dreadful solemnity to me. Thither the people resorted during the Sabbath intermissions, between forenoon and afternoon services, and thither I was sometimes led in my childhood by the maternal hand. My mother and others would read the epitaphs, and I instinctively moved with cautious tread lest I should do sacrilege to the silent abodes of the departed. Death was a strange and awful mystery to me for a considerable time, notwithstanding the patient answers to my inquiries concerning it. But at length I imbibed the inculcations given me that the souls of the dead had been taken away by God into some region of happiness or misery; that their bodies were asleep in the ground; and that at the great "Judgment Day," or "morn of the Resurrection," all would be raised to life again, body and soul be reunited, every one be judged according to his works, and then each be consigned to heaven or hell forever.

These religious ideas took early root in a susceptible and fertile soil. I had little special religious instruction, no Sunday schooling, no catechizing such as then prevailed in even the more popular churches—nothing in the way of spiritual culture but the suggestions which I incidentally stored up and the crude workings of my own busy mind. I had no doubt that there was a great and holy, yet awful, God in the form of a gigantic man, who was seated in a glorious chair above the blue arch of the sky. I imagined that he caused it to thunder by rolling a huge log with octagon corners from the convex center of the brazen firmament in various downward directions; that the sun, moon, and stars, the clouds, storms, and winds were all managed at will from day to day by his immediate interposition; and that all human actions were accurately recorded in a vast book for final judgment at the end of the world. Thus, with what I was taught and what I invented through my imagination, "I spake as a child, I understood as a child, and I thought as a child," until old enough "to put away childish things." But neither then nor since have I lived without thinking, and thinking for myself in some fashion.

The remaining five years of this first decade of my life, as I call them to mind, witnessed very little religious interest in the Ballou neighborhood. Preaching in our Meeting House grew irregular, the old church became colder in zeal and fewer in numbers, and a large majority of our Cumberland people spent the Sabbath in labor or rude sports and games. I certainly was not brought up thus far in a manner to be much injured or benefited by my religious training. Yet I was drawn into no very vicious or immoral courses of thought or conduct. Perhaps my industrial education and activity were the strongest safeguard against harm of that sort.

Work was the fundamental law in my father's household. He led off and all his forces had to follow. He allowed no idling and but a small modicum of amusement. This was confined to homely and simple kinds, such as hunting, fishing, wrestling, jumping, ball-playing, quoit-pitching, husking bees, quiltings, and the like, with neighborhood parties for the young folks and games appropriate to indoor arrangements and furnishings. Even these were few and some of them far between, and none of them wholly unrestricted and free. Card playing was utterly disallowed and anathematized. My father used to say that he once got bewitched with that sort of pastime, and, seeing its evils, forswore it forever. This was in his younger days. In my time, woe to every pack of cards smuggled by man or maid into his dominions. He had them in the fire instantly on discovery, and gave little quarter to the smuggler. Even simple countrified dancing was mighty scarce in my youthful days.

My father had over two hundred acres of land, including some woodlots nearly a mile away; also a sawmill, a cider mill, a large stock of cattle, and of course, there was no lack of employment indoors or out. Plowing, planting, harvesting, and all the multiform activities of farm life, with accompanying incidentals, kept all hands busy through the year. My mother used to say, when we of the younger brood complained of being hurried up in the morning and kept snug at work through the day, "You have a much easier time than your older brothers and sisters had, for your father has grown in years and does not drive ahead as he did when I first came to live with him." We thought it might be true, but that was no great comfort to us, as we still deemed ours a hard lot in the labor line.

We had a large, comfortable domicile, plenty of wholesome food, decent clothing, and the ordinary necessaries of an agricultural family; but luxuries, fineries, and gentilities were afar off. Brown bread and milk or porridge, different kinds of meat, rye or barley cake, coffee, cheap tea, cider, etc., were the staples of table fare, with plenty of butter, cheese, applesauce, and simple condiments. Cakes, pies, and other homemade delicacies had their occasions, but rarely was anything very rich or of outside manufacture furnished us. Our clothing was mostly of home production, spun and woven from flax and wool of our own raising—the woolen cloth being fulled and dressed at mills three or four miles dist-ant. Some extra cotton and woolen stuffs from other sources supplemented what was made by the family, increasing rapidly as I grew up. In my early boyhood young women pulled flax and assisted sometimes in the hayfield, but this soon went out of fashion. The spinning wheel and loom were in vogue much longer, and their operations in my parental household were memorable.

We were shod in those days chiefly with leather tanned at an establishment two miles away, and made of skins from our own cattle or those obtained in barter for them. Once a year, not long before winter set in, a shoemaker came to the house with his kit of tools on his back to do the family cobbling. He had to stay several days, and to us younglings, at least, he was an important personage. New boots or shoes, and especially calfskin ones, which, however, were rare, inspired much interest, not only in anticipation and realization, but in the process of their manufacture. Wonderful manipulations were witnessed from the time of taking the measure of our feet to that of trying on the finished article to see if there was a good fit. Sometimes we were favored with a story or song, or whistled tune from the dignitary of the awl and lapstone as the work went on. This entertaining drama ended with a settlement between father and the craftsman, who usually received part or all his dues in some kind of farm produce.

I was brought up to a very restricted indulgence in intoxicating beverages, but not to total abstinence. My father laid in a supply of ardent spirits for haying time and furnished them more or less on special occasions; but for common use, cider was the staple drink. I got lightheaded once or twice on the stronger liquors, of which I could bear but little. I had grown to man's stature, however, before I presumed to call for a glass of intoxicating drink at any public bar. Indeed I was a stranger to such places. Of cider, I was never fond, especially after it began to ferment or grow sour. But I had my fill of making it in my father's mill, and also of drawing and serving it, after it was stored in the cellar. This was boys' special business, and many a barrel had I to help empty, quart by quart. There must be cider on the table at mealtime, also in the mill or field or woods, wherever there were work-folks, at all seasons, and it was by no means to be omitted as a mark of hospitality to callers, whether they came on business or pleasure. Even the miserable sots of the general vicinity must not be denied it, unless absolutely intoxicated or dangerous. A few such there were who could pour down a quart at two or three draughts, and it is wonderful that they did not become twice as numerous as they actually were.

As to places of dissipation, there was but one in the neighborhood. This was an old-fashioned tavern kept by Major William Ballou, a son of Rev. Abner. It was located a mile south of us and a short distance east of the meetinghouse. And a sorry establishment it was, especially for the proprietor and his family. Rum-selling was too largely its business. The concomitants and pernicious consequences need barely be mentioned. It was a resort for the vicious, profligate, and sottish of the surrounding country, although it had some respectable phases of use. But it ruined the Major and all his family. They began life at the top of our Cumberland society as to wealth and general good standing, but most of them ended at the bottom, intemperate, poor, and more or less degraded. But this dangerous resort was placed under a perpetual ban by my father so far as his household was concerned, or at least his children. We were kept entirely away from it, except on now and then a public holiday or a strictly business errand.

I shall never forget one occasion on which I was allowed to go there with older members of our family. There was a military training, a single company of militia under Captain Amos Cook being out for regular parade. They had a kettledrum and fife for music, and their officers were arrayed in their accustomed toggery. I was perfectly bewitched with this, my first spectacle in the drama of war. I could not have been more than seven years old but I followed at the heels of this train-band all the afternoon, till compelled to go home. Swords, guns, colors, marchings, evolutions, and above all the music of that drum and fife (now disgusting to me), completely charmed me. If I had been of military age, and there had been a call to the wars, it would have taken neither the promise of a large bounty nor an eloquent appeal of patriotic oratory, to have made me a brave soldier boy. I was effectually inoculated with the pro-war contagion, which fevered in my veins for long years afterward.

The state of Rhode Island was very slow to adopt the common public school system of education. In my childhood the voluntary method prevailed. But every considerable section of territory had some kind of a schoolhouse and more or less schooling, both in warm and cold weather. The Ballou district was not an inferior one in this respect. It had wealth and intellect enough to erect a small building for educational purposes, and to secure competent teachers for summer and winter terms, which were of about three months' duration each. A female was employed for the former, and a male for the latter. Our neighbors in Massachusetts, who prided themselves on being better provided for in this respect than we, were prone to reproach us as ignorant and heathenish Rhode Islanders, which begat no very amiable feelings on our side the line. As a matter of fact we had in our particular district more and better schooling than the adjacent ones in our neighbor state, though neither had anything of this sort to boast of. Only the rudimental branches were taught and these but imperfectly, as compared with what is done at the present day.

There were eight or ten proprietors of our schoolhouse and they managed all school affairs. They provided for raising money, for boarding the teacher, a fortnight in one family and a week in another, as circumstances would allow, for supplying fuel and other incidentals, and appointed such committees to act for them as were deemed needful. They had their yearly meetings which were characterized by some tedious deliberations and sharp figurings. I frequently attended these gatherings after I was old enough to long for the school to open, but so much time was consumed in irrelevant talk and close reckoning that I often went home, discouraged and disgusted at the proceedings. But they knew what they were about and brought preliminaries to an issue generally on or before the first of December. The children of non-proprietors were provided for at a stipulated price of tuition per week; or, if their parents were quite poor, they might attend free, though this was of infrequent occurrence.

I think it likely that I was sent to the summer school earlier than I can now remember. I have a dim impression that I learned my letters of a schoolma'am when about three years old, but I recall distinctly the first master I had. It was when I was in my a, b, abs, and the shortest monosyllables. I was furnished with a new spelling book which was strongly covered with sheepskin by my mother that I might not soon injure it by careless usage. I was placed on the small boys' seat with others, a bashful, awkward little fellow, and ordered to keep still, but was very much at a loss what to do with myself or how to behave. For there was his majesty the master, and a whole houseful of scholars, many of them men almost and women grown. And who was I! The scene comes to me afresh. I dropped my head, stuck one corner of the book in my mouth, and unconsciously began to gnaw it. I had already done some mischief of this sort when I was discovered by the teacher and reprimanded. But I seemed fated to round off those book corners. Nor was I cured of the fault for some days, though frequently threatened with something dreadful if I did not desist. At length, after much harm had been done, I was called up, ordered to take off my coat and roll up my shirt sleeves, when the announcement was made that here was a boy with bad blood in his veins which must be taken out of him. The teacher then exhibited a fine sharp-pointed penknife as the lancet, and applied it to the skin of my arm with a slight prick. By this time the terror-stricken young culprit cried for mercy with such piteous penitence that, on solemn promise of amendment, he was spared further punishment and sent to his seat. He nevermore treated a book disrespectfully. But the nice new spelling book was irreparably damaged, and long remained a sad memento of my entrance upon my educational career.

Nevertheless, I soon began to love books, study, and learning, fondly. And from that time to the present, I have hungered and thirsted for knowledge with unsatisfied desire. My older brothers cared little for books till fifteen years of age, but I delighted in them from my sixth year. I liked to go to school, was easy to learn, had a good memory and an ambition to excel. I was generally docile, orderly, and disposed to be on the best of terms with my teachers, a point on which I seldom failed. The punishments I received were few and comparatively light. Most of them I incurred by yielding to the instigation of my roguish cronies who could easily make me laugh, or divert my curiosity, or swerve me into some infraction of the prescribed proprieties; into nothing very bad, but sufficiently out of order at times to require correction.

With my schoolmates, I maintained, for the most part, genial and harmonious relations. In scholarship I kept up with my rivals and left the majority of pupils in the rear. At play most of my mates excelled me, and the dullest of them would often leave me in the lurch. I was no match for many at wrestling, running, leaping, snowballing, etc., or any of the athletic exercises, unless it were some trial of mere strength, like lifting, pushing, or pulling. At skating, in which many of my companions were experts, and which I much admired as a beholder, I was nothing. Having once put on a pair of skates to try my capability, and suffered a fall backwards that made me "see stars," I renounced them forever. But in all matters where head work and tongue work came into requisition, I feared none of my associates. I was not fond of joking, punning, blackguarding, or hectoring in any way, and never begun at "cutting up" my playfellows. But if attacked, I could give back principal and interest. I asked nothing more of the bravest than that they should keep their hands off. Unluckily, in a few instances, some of the older and stouter of my assailants, when silenced in speech, made up for their intellectual defeat by a resort to brute force, when I went under. I soon learned what I have since found generally true, that the sauciest jokers and blackguards could bear the least of their own ammunition in return.

I was unhappy in but one of my childhood schools. That, I think, was a private one. It was taught by a worthy young lady, a niece of my father's first wife, on whose instructions I had already attended in our Ballou schoolhouse and whom I personally liked. But she was now teaching in her own neighborhood, in West Wrentham, Massachusetts. I was yet too young to be worth much at work, and so was sent to her school by my parents with the best of motives. But it was a mile and a half away, and nearly all the pupils were strangers to me. We belonged to different clans, of uncongenial peculiarities. Some of the older and rougher ones, whom I dared not answer back, taunted me with being a "Rhode Island Yankee," and called me in derision the "high priest." I was not able to bear all this with undisturbed equanimity and patience.

Moreover, there was a weird-looking, yet harmless, old lady, known as "Granny Grant," living on the road to the school, for whom I had conceived a superstitious aversion. My head had been filled with all sorts of ghost and witch stories, causing me many strange, imaginary apprehensions. What should possess me but the notion that this woman was a witch. She had a sinister lop of one eyelid, an imperturbable face, and a queer voice, what little there was of it. She walked abroad with a staff, wearing an old-fashioned, hooded cloak, whether of drab or bright scarlet, I forget. She was frequently on the road, trudging slowly along, and answered to my ideal of a witch completely. I had a great dread of her, and avoided meeting her whenever I could, by making a circuit outside of the highway near her residence, always keeping a sharp lookout for her from every eminence.

These repellent circumstances rendered the Wrentham school decidedly unpleasant for me. I frequently loitered and was behind time, for which I was reproved by my teacher, causing me to feel deeply mortified before my sneering schoolmates. Finally, I brought things to a head by skulking nearly all one day in the vicinity of the schoolhouse; but, being discovered by some of the older pupils, I was seized and marched into the presence of the mistress, my captors in loyal triumph exulting over me as a doomed truant.

Fortunately, my judge dealt with me "more in sorrow than in anger." She deprecated my misconduct and said she should content herself with reporting me to my parents. She did so, and I was severely admonished. By this time I was sufficiently humbled and almost sick. My kind mother, after hearing my explanations, saw through the case, and had me remain at home a few days, till she could recruit my health and encourage me to brave out the undertaking. This being done, I resumed my school attendance and no further trouble ensued. But I could not love my associations, and derived little profit from that particular opportunity. Probably, however, my experience there was a wholesome discipline to me.

One other unpleasant affair I call to mind in this connection. It occurred one winter in our district school, when I was between eight and nine years old, I think. One Christopher Olney from Providence, or vicinity, was the teacher. He had been a brilliant student at Brown University, but, falling into some bad habits, was expelled. He was an excellent scholar and a genius at teaching. He delighted in his profession, won the affection of his pupils, and was remarkably successful, provided he let liquor alone. An appetite for the intoxicating cup was one of his fatal weaknesses, and made a wreck of him at last. I shall never forget the captivating assiduity with which he would drill me all through an evening. This was his custom with his scholars wherever he boarded, especially if they manifested any interest in their studies. We were mutually fond of each other and he would flatter me by saying he was proud of me. He was also fond of cider, and when he had finished an evening's tuition, would cry out with a significant shrug of the shoulders, "Now take the bright luminary, descend into the dark vault, and fetch me some aqua vitae in a minute." And many a time I did it, which was sufficient pay for his extra services.

Before my time, this teacher had taught the same school, and had given a dramatic exhibition in the old meetinghouse at the close, which won popular admiration and fame in the vicinity. He now proposed to repeat the experiment, and began to prepare for it, the pupils all being expected to participate in the exercises of the occasion. To me was assigned the poetic effusion entitled "An Elegy to Pity," commencing:

Hail! lovely power, whose bosom heaves the sigh,
When fancy paints the scene of deep distress.

I easily committed it to memory, but I was troubled because it must be spoken to begin with before the school, with the usual oratorical accompaniments as to gesture, emphasis, intonation, etc. I felt so diffident and awkward that I utterly shrunk from this first appearance on the stage, though it was only in the presence of my teacher and schoolfellows. I had to be literally broken in by force. In spite of their mutual kindly regard, the teacher and his pupil had a falling out on account of this, though but for a short time.

When the rehearsal took place, I was called, in my turn, to the floor. I was slow to respond. My heart palpitated, my knees grew weak, a strange mingling of dread and shame seemed to possess me, and I had to be hauled into my proper position. Even then I could not or did not speak. My master, not expecting such conduct from his favorite pupil, flattered, urged, commanded me to begin, but all in vain. He then used threats, which proved equally ineffectual. Finally, he resorted to a droll, ignominious kind of punishment, more mortifying and vexatious than painful, unknown to me elsewhere before or since. It was a mock shaving, after the fashion of a barber, with a wooden razor, amid the laughter of the whole school. As he proceeded to put me through this process, I became stuffy, but neither struggles nor cries saved me. It was a ludicrous conflict, but I was subdued, and made to blubber out my rudimental oratory with more spunk than elegance.

Thenceforth I progressed to my teacher's entire satisfaction. He was quick to make up with me, professed to be sorry for the shaving episode, and almost begged my pardon. I was easily conciliated, and our relations were thenceforward as amiable as ever. The unfortunate man fell into some of his dissipations soon after, the Meeting House exhibition was given up, and only an impaired schoolhouse program performed. But the teacher pronounced me the flower of the occasion, and lavished on me abundant commendation.

The round of school exercises in those days was comparatively simple, as the textbooks were few in number, and crude in method and arrangement. The teacher stuck closely to the letter of the books, seldom asking questions or submitting problems calculated to draw out the mind, or awaken and discipline thought. There was but little done by way of explanation or fresh analysis. What the books contained was deemed sufficient. Now and then a genius in the teacher's chair or among the scholars transcended this routine, but such innovations were rare in the sphere of my observation till I had passed my tenth year.

I learned to read and spell with ease, and in those branches excelled the majority of my schoolfellows. Spelling schools on winter evenings were customary, exciting great interest and a spirit of wholesome emulation. As a result, good spellers were, I think, as numerous then as now. We had readers, writers, and arithmeticians of very respectable at-tainments, chiefly by reason of the few departments of study then pursued. I began grammar before I was ten years of age, and soon memorized Alexander's Elementary work, and could parse plain prose after the old fashion very well. But it was some time before I really understood grammatical principles so as to enjoy the study. When I did it became my delight. In penmanship and arithmetic, I by no means kept pace with my other acquirements.

Our school district was prolific in teachers of its own production. Many of the sons and daughters of the populous Ballou families, as they grew up, took their turns in their native school with good acceptance; also in other neighborhoods on both sides the state line. Yet only one of them, Barton Ballou, received a college education.

I was withdrawn from summer school as soon as I was old enough to be of use on the farm, and I lost entirely the winter term next preceding my ninth birthday. This happened by a somewhat strange transfer to a cotton factory.

After the celebrated Samuel Slater, a native of England, had established cotton spinning by machinery at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, his success excited others to ambitious enterprise in the same pursuit. Money was to be made, it was thought, at a fabulous rate, and capitalists, large and small, became adventurers in the business. Even staid farmers caught the fever and formed companies for purposes of cotton manufacture. One was started in our neighborhood with a capital of fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, in which my father became pecuniarily interested to the extent of two thousand dollars, a part of which he was obliged to borrow, much to his grief in the end. At the outset, however, everything was alluring and hopeful. The Blackstone (Slater's) establishment, then deemed gigantic, had already begun operations with a most promising outlook, and fresh adventurers were encouraged to push forward their projects with all possible speed.

Early in the year 1811, an eventful one in the history of our family, a factory was erected by the company formed in the Ballou district, on Mill River, just above its junction with the Blackstone, about three miles due west of our residence. It was in the same town and only a short distance from Woonsocket Falls, the village bearing that name being then exceedingly small, rude, and unimportant. Near the mill a tenement house was put up, the construction of which was effected by my father. The proprietors of the establishment called themselves the "Social Manufacturing Company," and their plant was known as the "Social Factory," afterward nicknamed the "Pistareen Factory."

The grand climacteric of this whole scheme was that my father became one of the overseers of the mill and removed his family to one of the tenements in the house he had previously built. Renting his farm to my oldest brother, Cyrus, he transferred the rest of us to the new house late in the season, and the winter of 1811-12 was spent there. He had charge of the carding room and his children were distributed in various positions of service about the establishment. I became what they used to call a "cotton bug." In this way I lost the tuition of the schoolhouse for that term, but received another kind of education which was perhaps quite as valuable.

I was delighted with my new position for a time and rose rapidly from the roping to the throstle-frame. But when spring opened my confinement grew irksome, and I sighed for my accustomed outdoor life. Great, therefore, was my joy when it was announced that father was disgusted with his situation and had arranged to return to the old home. This took place in April, and my ninth birthday found me once more a farmer boy.