PLEASURE AND WORK.

Though so earnest in study, he entered into all the sports and games among the young people, for this boyish nature was overflowing with a quaint humor. Fox and geese, hide and seek, ten men morris, hunting and fishing occupied their spare hours. The raccoon was a source of great mischief in all the fields and gardens, and many a night was spent in trapping and hunting these mischievous marauders. Wood could be sold at the village, but sugar, cheese, and lumber were taken to Bath and the Genesee Valley to exchange for wheat and household necessities not to be procured in this region. The general farm work began early in the spring, when the stones were picked up from the grass lands. Plowing, sowing, planting, and hoeing followed. Absorbed in plans for the future, which he kept to himself, young Allen would rest now and then on his hoehandle, so that these daydreams became quite a source of pleasantry with the other workers. As soon as old enough to carry the chain, he often helped his father in surveying, thus early learning the rudiments of this branch of mathematics. Going on with the study, he in time became independent in it, and afterward taught surveying in the Institution.

The winter's work of 1836 being completed, the general interest aroused by Bethuel Church and some of the older students, led to the publication of a paper on education, edited by Daniel C. Babcock and Amos W. Coon, and printed by Orra Stillman. These, with other influences, had to do with the erection of the building known among the students as the 'Horned Bug." Rev. James R. Irish, a student from Union College, came to teach in the fall of 1837, teaching for two years and preaching much of the time at the church. Jonathan was always first in his classes, and his schoolmates tell how ready he was to assist any of them in their studies. He was particularly clear in mathematical demonstration. In this way he not only learned to teach, but to plod patiently with the slow but earnest students, leading them on to success.

A lumber mill was built on Vandemark Creek, giving to the farmers an opporunity to earn something when their teams were not needed for the farm work. Father Allen would go to the mill, get his lumber, and return home at night ready for an early start with the load on the following morning. It took three days to go to Bath and return, and four to go to Hammondsport. As there were several teams going from the neighborhood, Jonathan was often put in charge of the load, much of the way being through the primeval forest. In these long, lonely rides he learned much of nature in her varying moods. The birds were his especial friends; he knew the note of each with a certainty that never failed. How he would welcome those of earliest spring! How he exulted in their freedom as their graceful wings cut the air! He never would allow the children a canary as an imprisoned pet. When the cuckoo made her rare visits to our orchard, he never failed to call me to share his pleasure; the thrill of music that filled every tree top with melody, made the morning hours the richest of the day. His love of early hours grew with his advancing years.

WILLIAM C. KENYON AS TEACHER.

Mr. Irish having been ordained and taken the pastorate of the church, William C. Kenyon took control of the school in the spring term of 1839, with twenty-five scholars. For several terms young Allen was his pupil, and was impressed by this wonderful teacher. Later he writes of him: "He was one of those slender, compact, nervous, magnetic men; a man very earnest, very incisive, somewhat radical, even eccentric, if you please, yet very genuine. The first sight of him on his arrival here to take charge of the school, stirred one young life to the core. The first address that we heard him deliver roused and thrilled us as no other, and we worked for days as in a dream; his teaching was suggestive, electric, inspiring." Rev. James R. Irish said of Kenyon, "He will get up, turn around, and sit down, while I am getting up."

At seventeen young Allen was prepared for teaching, and began his work in a district some eight miles from home. Many

of his pupils were older than himself, and some of them belonged to that rough element so common in new settlements. They gloried in rowdyism, and boasted that they had often had three or four teachers during the winter. With some heroic treatment he went through the entire time for which he was hired, the last weeks being the best part of his work, and what was still better, he was not disgusted with teaching. When he was eighteen he arranged to go down the Alleghany River with the lumbermen to Cincinnati. This would give him an opportunity to see the world and earn some money for books and study. Many an air-castle was built on this plan, even to his going as far as New Orleans. His brother, Judge Allen, writes that his mother could not give her consent to this, so he gave up this fairy dream and went back for the spring to the old sugar-camp and humdrum life he knew so well. He had books now, and every leisure hour was devoted to reading and study. He was never satisfied till he had mastered a subject, not as mere knowledge, but as something to be a part of himself.

PUBLIC EXHIBITION.

The school closed with a public examination of each class, and was followed by speaking, reading, and dialogues, in which most of the pupils took part. At the close of the spring term of 1841 Mrs. Susan Spicer writes:

"The house was crowded. The interest of the evening centered in a dramatic scene in which Jonathan Allen, then a leading student in the academy, bore a conspicuous part. The engrossing subject throughout the North was the slavery question. Professor Kenyon was a man of uncompromising antislavery sentiment. The recapture of slaves was then a common occurrence in the North, and a case of that kind had recently occurred, accompanied with more than the usual atrocities. Young Allen, then eighteen, proposed to the students to reproduce that scene at this school exhibition by an original dialogue. Mr. Allen represented the good Quaker who had befriended, housed, and fed the fleeing fugitives, and proposed to forward them on to Canada. The fugitives were represented

by students in tattered garments with blackened faces and hands, while others represented the pursuing slaveholders, officers, and assisting citizens. The slaves were seized at the home of the good Quaker. A neighbor suggested that the cursed Quaker be ridden on a rail, tarred, and feathered, which they proceeded to do. Mr. Allen was entirely submissive, but talked to them plainly of the cruel inhumanity of their system of slavery, sharply denouncing their brutal practices, then, finally raising his voice in cutting rebuke, he reached a climax unanticipated even by himself. In impassioned, eloquent terms he told them that their acts would react against them; that, instead of suppressing the antislavery sentiments, they would intensify and .extend them; that every abuse of this kind would raise up for them one hundred more friends; that in a little time the pen, the press, and all the better elements of the North would array themselves against them. Then he made the following statements: 'God will not permit such an institution to exist in America much longer. Even now I seem to hear its death knell. God's repressing hand is laid upon you. The days of slavery are already numbered, though it will die only after a hard struggle. It will die only after a baptism of our whole country in blood. Twenty years from now an antislavery President will be elected. You of the South will rebel and endeavor to establish a slaveholder's oligarchy. The North will not submit to the dissolution of these States, and a fearful carnage will follow. Slavery will be abolished, and God will preserve the nation. May God be merciful to the people. God save the poor and oppressed.' The interest in the narrative centers in the mystery of young Allen's prophesying coming events so definitely."

At the first meeting in Chapel Hall in 1861 to consider the call of the government for volunteers to meet the new emergency, in which Professor Allen took a leading part, the writer of these pages rehearsed the forecast of twenty years previous, and the narrative acted like magic. Professor Allen then looked back upon that impromptu forecast as inexplicable except as it was born of faith.

CHAPTER IV.

PIONEER LIFE IN WISCONSIN.

EACHING in winter, going to school whenever possible, and working on the farm, filled up the next year, when the family decided to go to Wisconsin-a section just opened to settlers.

My first memory of Jonathan Allen was in the spring term of 1842. My sister, Harriet Maxson, five years my senior, and myself were living at Mr. Irish's, who one day said, "I have just told Abram Allen that if he takes his son Jonathan to Wisconsin, he will become its governor." "Not one of my boys,” said Mr. Allen. "That one has a two-story head, I said," remarked Mr. Irish. There was to be recitations that afternoon, so I asked my sister if she knew the governor. "Why, "Show him to me." During that afternoon, when a tall, diffident young man came upon the stage, she whispered, "There is the governor." No doubt lacking confidence, he was not quite a silly girl's idea of that great dignitary. He was then nineteen, and in a few weeks went West with his family, where his father and mother had hoped to have the children all around them in their declining years.

yes.

Uncle Ethan Burdick was already in Milton, Wisconsin, while Uncle George, with several other families, accompanied ours on the journey there. Deacon L. Allen says of this time: "The three families numbered twenty-four souls, all to be housed in a building twenty-four by eighteen, while the new houses were being built; but it was in summer time; the sweet hay made nice beds for us boys, while the chamber floor was at night covered with beds for the little ones." Here Jonathan worked on the farm, did surveying in the summers, and taught