The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-12-12
HOW SOME OF TIE
 FATHERS LIVED The Simple and Strenuous Life of Seventy Years
 Ago. NOT MUCH MONEY THEN But No Lack of Hard Work and stssdy AeAisve-
 meat.

poets to sing; 1t was a civilization of their own, now as dead as that of the Mound builders, with only this difference that they built nation, while the aborigines erected only "tombs to commemorate their noth- ingness." as de Tocquoville tersely puts it.
 The philosophic modern dream of the simple life is simply bosh! No generation but our fathers ever lived 1t on this continent, or ever will. That life they lived upon compulsion, in an environment they could not escape for no generation ever yet lived the simple life we love to dream of except when bound to it by necessity
 The times 1 am thinking of were not well begun a century ago, and my thought loves to finger among the men and women T knew In the vest ern woods and prairies, who were born so little before mo that they were in their prime when l was 2l; and these, quite well rcmertber, wore born from Gladstoncs and Lircoln's great year, 1909, and up t9 1S3o, about, and were the men who built that western empire which had only begun to nour- ish in 1861. They wero mostly men born, like Corwin, Lincoln, the She"- mans, Hayes Garfield, Giddings md lStantons, in log cabins and poverty. Their fathers had driven the Indians west of the Ohio and the Mississippi land the British across seas to their own land. and the sons were of the royal American blood that saved the State which their fathers had built
 Trained to use the ax and the hoe, they easily passed on and up to use the sword and the gun and later on to enrich in peace the State which they had saved in war.
 I see these stalwart boys fin their log cabins in the clearings,s and hear their axes ring American destiny. Their fathers and mothers could not read or write, but they saw to iNearly that their boys and girls should learn these keys to goodness and greatness. I All that then western wilderness 1 from the Ohio to the lakes and on to- ward the Mississippi was a dream to ] us DONS bOlil MCAiFV FVh " ttAN 1Nps AN0b one of us in hundred had been 20 miles from home before the Civil war. Think of it--10S4 boys under 21 in my regiment, and not hundred of them had any actual knowledge of the mysterious ar-off lands 20 miles from where they first saw the light! The Civil war woke them up. Education | fNlfoSrh5 fha av asaJ tbn
 Out of such conditions came Grant, Lincoln, Sherman, Sheridan and all the mighty coadjutors of Lincoln when the
 time rang out the call for men to save
 the State their fathers had built. The
 boys had the blood royal--empires in
 their brains and the dauntless hearts
 and strong limbs to obey any call oi
 dare any fate. They had lived on corn
 bread made of corn they helped raise
 and carry to the old water mill They
 had worn homespuns from the backs
 of their fathers' sheep, which they had
 sheared, and had seen their mothers
 spin and weave in that old cabir where a dozen people or more lived
 in happiness and the fear of God, bu
 In fear of no man.
 At their fathers house they hat
 seldom seen money. A hundred dollars
 year was more than the average
 farmer handled in any of those year:
 from 1880 to 1S40.
 The saloon was unknown, but here
 and there some would buy e barrel O whiskey for twice it's cost, in any
 quantity desired. There was no license , then Anybody could enter the busin s freely. There was a stillhouse in every
 part of the country. Everybody, al : most, drank more or less. but drunk enness was more rare than now } now recall but two dfunkards that knew until was 16 and went off t college. And by the way, among tn students before the war no drinkinl , was tolerated never knew a dozei students who tasted liquor at all ant . I was, first and last, a student fo eight years in four colleges, and knev
 thousand of students in those days . Not one of them died drunkard. Ye
 they had never seen the day in thei 2 fathers houses when the whiskey bot \ tie, we'll filled, was not before then, \ No locks, no keys, no thieves, and ev X erybody ready to aid everybody else ' Everybody learned a trade Ever township had it's own natter, shoe \ maker, barber tanner, tailor, mer [ chant, teacher, doctor, carpenter, law \ yer, and all these lived on a farm an worked 1t with the help of their chil \ dren. Every community supplied itseli K No trusts, no combine then.
 The schoolmaster got S60 year an | his board; the preacher and the docto \ less, Men who later made statute \ formed and construed constitutions led armies. and wrote history by thei E lives and words-lawyers, 1 mear \ greater than any that now live, ia N greater--earned about S150 to $500 year at our bar, and educated thei \ boys and girls--oftener a dozen tha
 less You could buy a horse for S4t
 COW for $s, flour at s2 barrel sal
 at $1; sheep for $1, a hog of 30 ' pounds for $4, a calf for s1, a co for $l0; potatoes for IS cents, az ! pies and peaches in abundance for ia
 less, and so on to the end of the lis
 of necessities for the farmer and ht I children-who did not buy, but raise
 them, and sold all they could spar
 to pay taxes and the price of lant
 which cost from $1.25 to $9 an acre. \ That was the simple life--lived the E and only then, never more to be anl < thing but a holy memory on this cor
 tinent-Privste Dalsell in the Wasl ! ington HeyRIa.