CHAPTER TWO 



My very early education I received at home, and I Learning 

 cannot remember when I did not know how to ^° 

 read. But according to my mother it was in her ^'" ^ 

 lap, as she rested and read Greeley's Tribune, that 

 I began to pick out letters, and then words. At 

 about the age of nine I first went to school, the un- 

 graded district school at Gainesville which I at- 

 tended for four years, and was then "put in the 

 Fourth Reader." From Orlin Cotton, the teacher, 

 to whom as a lad I owed a good deal in various ways, 

 I had much sympathetic encouragement. Under 

 him I studied Latin, and for writing lessons (in 

 place of conventional copybook tasks) he allowed 

 me to make an annotated catalogue of the rulers of 

 every nation of which I was able to secure a history. 

 My first impulse in this direction had come from 

 being set to list the kings of Israel by a teacher in 

 Sunday school. And there also I had some helpful "Speaking 

 voice training, being encouraged to "speak pieces" ^^ 

 at church gatherings. In this effort I took a good 

 deal of interest, doing fairly well, as I remember. 

 After all, there is no great difference between 

 appearing before a Sunday-school audience and 

 addressing a congress or mass meeting. My last 

 selection, I recollect, was J. T. Trowbridge's poem 

 on Bolivar; this was in 1865, just after the death of 

 Lincoln. 



In school I used to do my lessons very rapidly 

 and then often amused myself by inventing or re- 



c 19 : 



neces 



