CHAPTER V.

YOUTHFUL OCCUPATIONS.

EARLY MATURITY. — BOILING SALTS. A MAN'S WORK AT HARVESTING -AMBITION TO BE A CARPENTER. SELF-SACRIFICES OF THOMAS. -THE NEW FRAME HOUSE AT ORANGE. LEARNING THE TRADE -OUT OF WORK. CHOPPING WOOD. WISHES TO BE A SAILOR.VISITS A SHIP AT CLEVELAND. ABANDONS THE IDEA OF BEING A SAILOR. -FINDS EMPLOYMENT ON THE OHIO CANAL. -A DRIVER BOY.-XEVER AND AGUE.-A QUARREL. AN ACCIDENT. — GOES HOME TO HIS MOTHER.

THE years of 1844 and 1845 included a period of great uncertainty with James. His hard work and the needs of life, felt by him unusually early, had given to his mind a somewhat premature development. He possessed a tough, awkward body, and features which were not very prepossessing. But his mind was bright and mature. He labored very hard. For a few months he found employment in "boiling salts," which, in that early day, was made moderately profitable by the presence of immense quantities of ashes left in the clearings. The process of leaching the ashes and extracting the salts by boiling the liquid was a very dirty and unpleasant business.

The boy was often as black with soot as the followers of the kindred trade of charcoal burning, and his clothing was heavy with ashes and smoke. In this, as in every other undertaking, he was determined to

excel, and began early in the morning and worked late at night. Another portion of that period he spent in chopping wood, being paid by the cord. In this he did a mature man's work, and received, for the first time, a man's wages. He also engaged himself in harvesting, and swung the scythe through the grass, the sickle in the grain, and the rake over the meadow, the equal of the eldest. But the work was so exhausting that he often heartily wished that he could see some other way of securing an honest living.

One day he saw a carpenter, with saw and chisel, at work framing a barn, and it occurred to him that the trade of a carpenter would suit him better than the ceaseless drudgery of a pioneer farmer's life. He had shown some adaptability for that trade in the repairs he had from time to time made on his mother's house and barn, and in the toys which he had ingeniously constructed. On consulting with his mother, he decided to learn the carpenter's trade. But no opportunity presented itself just at that time, and he worked on in his heavy labor, waiting for some way to open to the lighter occupation. Thus, at fifteen years of age, we find him an uncultured country boy, with no acquaintance with the world beyond the clearings and cabins of that new land. He appears to have had no thought or ambition above that of being able to earn a living. He had given up attending the school in his district, in which he had made good progress, and considered his education complete, as far as school-books were con

cerned. Certainly, his prospects for a place among the learned of the nation could scarcely have been more discouraging than it was then. What had chopping wood, boiling salts, digging ditches in the meadows, and milking cows, to do with refinement and intellectual cultivation? However, the industry of the family was such that they began to accumulate a little fund, with which they purposed to purchase the materials to construct a frame house.

They began laying up pennies for that object, and to that small fund added dollars, and as the children grew older and earned more, the prospect grew brighter. At last, Thomas, whose fatherly interest in the family was truly heroic, secured a contract for clearing a large tract of land in Michigan, and chopping the wood. The profits of his labor in that undertaking were such that, after paying all his expenses the overjoyed young man was able to come back to the home he had missed so much, and present to his mother the sum of eighty dollars. That amount having been added to the building fund, they felt able to undertake the enterprise, for which they had so long planned.

When they considered the matter of securing a carpenter, to make the frame for their new house, the opportunity for James to learn the trade seemed to present itself. It was in the construction of this little house of four rooms, near their log cabin, that James performed his first, work at the carpenter's trade. The carpenter under whose tutelage James succeeded in obtaining a good practical knowledge,

was Jedediah Hubbell of Chagrin Falls, and throughout a long life he was the staunch friend of his former apprentice.

The year 1846, when James was fifteen years old, was an eventful one in the life of the inexperienced boy. They had a new house and he had entered upon a new trade. Henceforth, he would be a carpenter, and his greatest pride was to be found in the drawing of the shave and pushing the plane. That was a step upward. . He could earn higher wages, and it was less laborious than farming or clearing away timber. Yet, he never became such an expert at the trade as to deserve any especial praise. With the opportunities he had, with the few tools he could secure, and with employment only on the cheap farm houses and barns of that day, it is no surprise that he was an indifferent workman. His work was always carefully done, and gave the satisfaction that honest work gives to honest people. But in that trade he exhibited no striking genius, and constructed no buildings which would now be considered monuments of art or of remarkable skill.

He could not always find work as a carpenter, and was frequently, in the following years, compelled to leave the plane, and take up the hoe and shovel. Turning his hand to every kind of work that a young man could do, he found life rather hard, and his increase in knowledge and property very slow.

He had not found his level. He began to feel it severely when, after two years of toil, he found himself with but little money left with which to

open another season. At one time he became utterly discouraged, and could see nothing before him but the same poverty and the same arduous toil. To be dissatisfied with one's trade or employment is not always an evidence of a fitness for any other station, although it often leads to the accomplishment of higher tasks. James, however, was not so much dissatisfied with his trade or work as he was with the unprofitableness of it, owing to the uncertainty of remunerative employment during the entire year.

At one of these seasons of uncertainty, the old longing to be a sailor returned with its pictures of the ocean's grandeur and sublimity; and for a time the old spirit of his early boyhood was upon him. Homesick for the sea! Yearning for adventure! Wishing to visit the strange lands of which the story books had told! In this restless mood, he determined to find some way in which to secure a place as a sailor on some Atlantic ship. But the offer of a job of chopping one hundred cords of wood made to him by his uncle, Thomas Garfield, called his attention away for a while, only to make it to return with greater determination.

The woodland where he worked for his Uncle Thomas, was situated near Newberg, and not very far from Lake Erie, and often, during his stay, he walked over to look out upon the changing hues of that ocean of fresh water. Once in a while he saw stately ships enter the harbor and furl their sails, and his heart beat fast with excited ambi