386 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



me, for I then turned my back upon early, joyous, and 

 buoyant childhood and entered upon the real struggle of 

 preparing for life. 



At "Wheeling we rented a house on Zane Street and for 

 the first time I saw a public school. Wheeling, with New 

 England enterprise, had inaugurated a most excellent 

 school system and James and I entered in the earnest 

 work of the school. Isaac worked at his trade in summer 

 and attended the Fourth Street Academy in winter, 

 whilst Mary spent a year in a girl's seminary. 



My father was industrious and poor, and he and Uncle 

 Robert entered upon the work of building at once on our 

 arrival. As James and I went up the grimy and sooty 

 streets in the morning after our arrival, with clean faces 

 and clean shirts and our best clothing, we were astonished 

 to find that we attracted a good deal of attention and the 

 boys at the alley corners would shout ' ' Country Jake ' ' as 

 we passed by. We paid no attention to these taunts and 

 kept as close together as a Macedonian phalanx as we 

 passed through these new scenes and though some of the 

 hoodlums threatened us, they did not attack us. 



We both sought employment carrying newspapers after 

 school hours, James getting employment with the Intel- 

 ligencer, a Whig paper, and I with the Argus, the Demo- 

 cratic organ. We each got the princely sum of fifty cents 

 a week, but we got exercise going over our routes at a dog 

 trot delivering the papers after school hours, and the 

 work built up bone and muscle that many a year after 

 were found useful in mature life. 



The fifty cents a week helped to buy school books and 

 clothing and we both faithfully performed this work dur- 

 ing the two years we lived in Wheeling. In the summer 

 vacations we each worked in the printing offices for two 

 dollars a week and on New Year's Day sold Carriers' Ad- 

 dresses to our patrons. I sold seven dollars' worth the 



