mental congratulations of this character: "Well, you are going home, going home in two or three days; your hard times will all be over. You will see your mother and father, your sister and brother, and all the kind' well-wishers that you count among the inhabitants of dear, delightful Evanston. You will see the old, familiar rooms, and the lake, and the college, and the church. You will sleep in your own little room with your sister by your side, and your cousin not far off-your bright cousin Sarah, Lollie's sister. So thank God, and be sorry that you have not better deserved the blessings He is showering on your head." This is the melody of my life, all else is but seeming, and variations upon this beautiful reverie.

December 18.-Attended my classes and walked to and from school through rain and mud unutterable. I sent to Chicago yesterday for prizes for my Sunday-school boys, to-day went to the depot and wrote their names in their books. They met me there, and as fast as this was done, the graceless little scamps snatched their "winnings" and scampered off without as much as "By your leave," much less, "Thank you." Such an instance of unkindness and ingratitude I have not seen in a long time.

Quotation from our reading lesson at school: "That which each man can do best, no one but his Maker can teach him. Insist on yourself, never imitate. Every great man is a unique." (Emerson's "Essay on Self-reliance.")

Packed my trunk to-night, and so it is almost all over, and I am going home.

December 21.-An awful snow-storm has commenced. I walked through the drifts to school. The elements seem determined to wreak their vengeance upon me to the last. Well, let them, they have but a little longer. Here are some lines written by Stillingfleet that contain “my doctrine," as father says:

"Would you
both please and be instructed, too,
Watch well the rage of shining to subdue.
Hear every man upon his favorite theme,

And ever be more knowing than you seem.”

Evanston, December 26.-I doubt if there is a person living who has greater cause for thankfulness than I have. I am in my little room once more; the fire burns brightly; the old, familiar furniture is about me; the pictures look down benignly from the walls; my sister Mary sits at my feet, writing in her funny, off-hand journal; my cousin "Sac" sits opposite; my brother in his room across the hall is writing a sermon; down-stairs father and mother gather cozily around the home hearth, and with heart brimming full of thankfulness, I come to Thee, Father of every good and perfect gift

11

CHAPTER III.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN HARLEM AND IN EVANSTON.

(1861-1862.)

In the spring of 1861 I once more taught Harlem school for a few weeks. Here at the Thatcher homestead, "Shady Dell," came in June the climax that I then thought would close my independent career. But in the following February that spell was broken and I resumed the spelling-book in April of the same year.

The first I knew about the war was when my father came home from Chicago, April 13, 1861, in an agony of mind, saying, "Fort Sumter has been fired upon and our flag is there no longer." This produced great consternation in our household. When I think of the love that fills my heart toward the Southern people in general and my own great circle of friends there in particular, I can hardly believe that I exhausted language in anathemas upon them when this news came. Soon after, the Bull Run defeat showed us what we did not till then believe, that we had foemen worthy of our steel! Up to that time we looked with disdain upon the lily-handed Southrons" and thought that General Scott would soon teach them the difference between "a lot of idlers" and the horny-handed and lion-hearted soldiers of the North. After that terrible defeat the students in the University immediately formed a company commanded by Alphonso C. Linn, one of the truest of men and a favorite teacher there, who left us with a thousand blessings on his noble head and returned to us no more. A company was also formed among the theological students in which my brother enlisted for one hundred days, but they were not called out. All the relatives I had were too old to go as soldiers except my brother and two cousins; the latter had dependent families, my brother was never physically vigorous,

Our First War Meeting.

163

and I am compelled to admit that we were well content that the company to which he belonged was not called away from home. I used to be sorry at the time that none of my kindred, so far as I knew, was in the army, but I can not say at this distance that I am now, and while I know that if my understanding of the Southern people had then been what it now is, I should have felt altogether different toward them, I have the poor satisfaction of knowing that they anathematized us as bitterly as we did them! It grated strangely on my ear when the first Sunday trains I ever knew rumbled by loaded with soldiers from my own Wisconsin. The day is fresh in memory when Gen. Julius White, on Sunday morning after church, stood up in his pew near the altar and made an impassioned speech calling upon all patriots to convene in the church the next night and declare what they were going to do to save the country. They came; the old "meeting-house" was filled to overflowing and our hearts beat fast when students whom we knew and thought much of, went up the aisle and placed their names upon the muster-roll. Governor Evans presided, and he with other rich men and many not so rich, pledged large sums to the families of those who agreed to go to the front. I was a young school-teacher, but according to my narrow income, perhaps I gave as generously as any. I would have given myself to care for the wounded, indeed, was earnestly desirous of so doing, but my father would not for a moment listen to such an idea, and I must say mother was not particularly heroic in that connection. But we scraped lint and prepared bandages; went to all the flag-raisings, Professor Jones's College flinging the first one to the breeze, and we prayed the God of battles to send freedom to the slave.

In 1862, the Public School of Evanston was my theater of action. Dr. Bannister, professor of Hebrew in our Theological Seminary, was a director. Meeting him on the sidewalk near his own door, I asked him for the place. He thumped meditatively with his cane, then said, abruptly, Are you sure that you can do it, Frank?" All my forces rallied on the instant in the words, "Try me and see!" His daughter was my associate, and ours was a difficult portion; two young women essaying to teach their