collector. One of these exploits was a raid on the watermelon 
patch when the melons were about the size of goose eggs* When 
discovered he had nearly the whole prospective crop gathered in- 
to a heap. What happened to him on that occasion is not record- 
ed* The collecting habit, however, grew on him and today 
various Museums are burdened with accumulations in geology, arche- 
ology and art as the result of his enterprise. 
His first day at school, in the little wchoolhouse in 
the edge of an oah forest, is distinctly remembered. His two 
older than himself 
brothers/had brought home terrible stories of the whippings ad- 
ministered to unruly pupils by the teacher, and when they got 
him to the top of the hill where the first glimpse of the school- 
house was obtained, he promptly "bucked, " refusing to go further, 
but was forced along, and in his later years has no recollection 
of the administration of corrective treatment by the teacher. 
His art, career, indeed his entire career in the outer 
world, was foreshadowed and begun while in the first and second 
school readers. With his seat mate, Alexander Hammond, he took 
to tracing the little illustrations in their readers with *sharo 
they * 
points and soon/had them partially cut out of the boohs. He 
imagined that he excelled in this worh. 
and pride of his shill 
led him to other graphic ventures, which are not ended after the 
lapse of three-quarters of a century. Joseph Thomas, one of 
his school mates some years older, was quite artistic in his turn 
and had acquired a small hox of colors, 
01 which the incipient 
