Читать книгу The Experiences of Uncle Jack: Being a Biography of Rev. Andrew Jackson Newgent онлайн

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After the father’s death, the mother with her nine children moved back to their former home in Parke County. Life then took on a sterner aspect for the boy. His tender hands must perform their part in the maintenance of the family. Accordingly he hired out to Mr. Jesse Maddox, a neighboring farmer. His wages the first year were to be a pair of shoes, ten bushels of corn, and the privilege of attending the district school. The market price of corn was ten cents per bushel. Even at this modest stipend he admits that he made money, “though not very much.” While in after years of fruitful labors in the ministry he often remarked that the question that most perplexed him was how to earn what he received, it is not probable that the question at this time had assumed very serious proportions.

The most important stipulation in the contract was the privilege of attending school. But even this is subject to shrinkage when we recall that the school system of Indiana was then in its first stage of development. It afforded no royal path to learning, and the common thoroughfare was neither smooth nor flowery. We would scarcely expect to find in the schoolroom comforts that the home itself was a stranger to. Strikingly suggestive of the interior aspect of those primitive seats of learning are the lines from Whittier’s “In School Days”: