The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1908-09-18
CANYONS EARLY LIFE
When They Had Saved $4,000 She Said THAT is Enough
Settled Boy tie Wabash River and Moved
To Illinois to Practice Law.

The early struggles Of Speaker Joe"
Cannon are graphically described in
the following manner by James NJ.
Morrow, one of his closest friends.
A note Of tenderness crept into mis-
unmusical speech and a mist of love
and memory blurred the uncommon
clearness and shrewdness of his
twinkling blue eyes. Speaker Cannon
arose, put his hands on the back of
his chair and looked at the wall as he
/ spoke:
MY wife did her own work and
We lived within our income-I always
have done that. 1 remember l said to
her one morning after breakfast:
Mary, l went down to the office
last night and counted up what L
what we have accumulated. It's $685.
OOO.'
Then she came to me and laid her
hand on my arm. Father she de-
clared, that is enough
! "The Puritans were a splendid peo-
pie. Macaulay tells us that they had
long hair and talked through their
noses. However that may be, we do
know they were stern evangelists,
carrying their piety at the end of a
club and otherwise giving virtue an
| odiOus and heartless aspect. They
drove a good many quiet folk out Of
| the northeast colonies An ancestor
Of mine, holding that every man
should mind his own business, and be-
ing weary with Puritanic supervision,
moved to Guilford, in North Caro-
lima, where other hectored Quakers
had gone before him. There my faith
er was born, and being left an orphan
while yet an infant, two maiden Qua
ker sisters came to the village and
asked for him. They brought him up.
sending him to a Quaker academy and
helping him into the medical profess
sion. He married in the church and
Dracticed medicine at GuiIford, where
I was born in 1886.
Settled on the Wabash River
But the QuakerS gave testimony
against slavery, war, violence and in
justice, and were not overly comfor-
table in North Carolina. Accordingly,
each year, several covered wagons,
bearing men, women and children,
left GuilfOrd, bound north to Ohio, In
diana and Illinois. My family thus
emigrated while l was a yOungster.
finding a home near the Wabash river
in the little Indiana village of Annap-
oils
My father was a man of resOlute
and courageous character-a Scotch
Irishman, who handed down some
qualities to me of which I make no
vaunt, but which l do not attempt to
conceal or deny.
Eat the age of fifteen I had to go
out into the world. l had read the
Commentaries Of Caesar in Latin and
had made good Roadway at school. An
elder brother was in college and We
kept him there. Another brother, the
youngest in the family, was short
sighted, and there was prejudice
against persons whose eyes we're bad;
they couldn't do a full days work,
and so on. l went to clerk in cOun-
| try store at Annapolis at 800 a year.
My mother boarded me. The second
year my employer kept me at his
house and paid me $3.50. l sold ev-
erything from a quart of tar to a
skein of silk, and developed into a
competent clerk. 1 remained in the
store for five years, and my wages
during that time amounted to $1,000.
while was clerking a young girl
in the village sued a man because his
wife had spread evil stories about
her. There was much feeling in the
village over the matter; even the
churches took sides for and against
the girl and the woman. A lawyer of
great elOquence was brought from IL
linOis to defend the suit, and John P.
! Usher afterwards coming to distinc-