"
This summer brought our family few smiles but many tears, and the
death-angel passed close to our doors. My eldest brother, while
at work in the hayfield, was smitten by the sun, causing a mental
aberration which made him a wanderer upon the face of the earth, and
finally led him to cut the thread of life with his own hand; my second
brother was pulled by his coat entangled in a wheel, beneath a heavy
load which crushed his thigh. This left the rest of us to struggle as
best we could with multitudinous weeds striving to choke the crops,
and the many trials incidental to wresting sustenance from the
reluctant bosom of mother earth.
My brother Mark, about this time took upon himself the joys and
sorrows of a family and home of his own, while I assumed the care of a
family of forty school children in the neighboring town of I----.
I was but "unsweetened sixteen," and lack of tact and strength brought
me many trials in my endeavors to "teach the young ideas how to shoot
correctly." The usual tacks were placed in my chair, causing the
war-dances incidental to such occasions; the customary pranks were
resorted to by young America to settle the oft mooted question as to
who is master; the inevitable interference of parents followed, who as
usual, regarded their children as cherubs whose wings they seemed to
think would soon appear were it not for the tyrannical spanks of the
unworthy teacher.
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