During the four years that I was in the University, I earned enough in
the harvest-fields during the long summer vacations to carry me
through the balance of each year, working very hard, cutting with a
cradle four acres of wheat a day, and helping to put it in the shock.
But, having to buy books and paying, I think, thirty-two dollars a
year for instruction, and occasionally buying acids and retorts, glass
tubing, bell-glasses, flasks, etc., I had to cut down expenses for
board now and then to half a dollar a week.
One winter I taught school ten miles south of Madison, earning
much-needed money at the rate of twenty dollars a month, "boarding
round," and keeping up my University work by studying at night. As I
was not then well enough off to own a watch, I used one of my hickory
clocks, not only for keeping time, but for starting the school fire in
the cold mornings, and regulating class-times. I carried it out on my
shoulder to the old log schoolhouse, and set it to work on a little
shelf nailed to one of the knotty, bulging logs.
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