2 Curtis : Lucien Marcus Underwood 



* 



enthusiastic in all his studies. He would spend the lunch period 

 in the room where the physical apparatus was stored and it was 

 his custom to gather the botanical material for the entire class, 

 carrying it three miles to school. 



The surroundings and conditions under which he obtained his 

 education will appear as rather strange to the youth of to-day. 

 At five he began to attend the summer sessions at " the brick 

 schoolhouse " of the district and so continued until he was eleven 

 years of age, at which time he became one of the farm hands, and 

 thenceforth time for educational work could be given him only 

 during the winter terms. At the age of fifteen he entered Caze- 

 novia Seminary, where he studied for two successive winters, and 

 he was also able to pursue his work without interruption during 

 the academic year of 1 870-1 871, during which session he secured 

 the scholarship prize and the mathematical prize. An interesting 

 record shows that he never missed a chapel or class exercise 

 throughout this entire year, although during this student life at 

 Cazenovia he lived at home, three miles distant, and usually walked 

 to the seminary. 



The idea of securing a college education was first suggested to 

 him by Professor L. M. Coon (afterwards Judge Coon of Oswego) 

 in 1870, but circumstances compelled him in the fall of 1871 to 

 take charge of his father's farm, which he worked upon shares, 

 lumbering in winter and performing the ordinary farm work in the 

 summer. Such was his life for nearly two years, during which 

 time he had been so impressed by reading Winchell's Sketches of 

 Creation, Lyell's Principles of Geology, and other books that he 

 determined to go to college. Accordingly he again attended 

 Cazenovia Seminary during the spring term of 1873, when his 

 unusual facility as a writer and his natural ability as' a speaker 

 became manifest for the first time. It should be added that these 

 accomplishments were not entirely natural to young Underwood 

 and were acquired only with very considerable, and to him, pain- 

 ful effort. During this term lie represented the Philomathesian 

 Society at the prize declamation contest, delivered his first public 

 oration (this being a chapel exercise at that time), and was also 

 selected as one of the speakers at the commencement exercises, 

 though he was not a member of the graduating class. 





