College Men Without Money

UTHER FOX, A.

r’s examination and was granted a certificate and taught a six months’ term of country school, closing it seven days after I was sixteen. I boarded at home and received $130 for the six months. Half of this money I gave to my father and with the other half I entered and completed 36 the spring term of the high school. During the winter evenings while I was teaching I studied Latin grammar and Jones’ “First Latin Lessons.” Hence I was able, with some help from my brother, to join the Latin class on entering the high school, to pass the examination at close of the term, and thus to have a year’s Latin to my credit. I returned to school at the opening of the fall term, but left at Thanksgiving, when I returned home to teach the same school I had taught the previous winter. I received this time $

and maple wood. I made inquiry and learned that it belonged to the college president. Then I called upon him and applied for the position of wood sawer to him. He asked me whether I had ever sawed wood. I replied truthfully that I had never sawed much, but that I knew how it was done. He said he would furnish the saw and the “horse” and that I would have to saw only enough each day to keep him supplied. That suited me, for it meant that I could have other contracts running at the same time. It took practically the whole winter to complete the work, sawing usually toward evening enough for the following day. My compensation in money was $20. But I was also facing the question of daily bread. I couldn’t go to a boarding club 38 for I had no money. There was a college boarding hall. I noticed that they kept a cow, and I conceived the idea that that cow might help support me. I appli

ugh to purchase the new suit. The college cistern needed cleaning. I took the contract for $3.50. It was a large cistern and supplied the drinking water for the dormitory students. There was about one foot of water in it the day I cleaned it. I hired a fellow for $1.00 to hoist the buckets and I went down into it and scrubbed it clean. We finished about sunset. The authorities concluded to lay a new conducting pipe from the dormitory to the cistern, a distance of about fifteen feet. While we were cleaning they tore the old one out. Just as we finished, the college president came along and peered down at me. “Ah,” said he, “how nice and clean. Now pray for rain.” “No, no,” exclaimed th

dent Rutherford B. Hayes addressed our class. Some things he said seemed intended for me. He spoke of the Dignity of Work. He said many people had hands and didn’t know how to use them. It was really an appeal for manual training, a phase of education not then in vogue, but to which advanced educators were turning attention. But I had had it all as an extra. I had read Latin, Greek, and German with my classmates. I had traversed the historical centuries i

Mich.