The facilities for acquiring an education in that neighborhood were very slim indeed, besides I never felt inclined to go to school even when I had a chance; I was too fond of hunting and fishing, or playing around the majestic bluffs that wall in one side or the other of Big River, the whole length of that crooked and very romantic stream. One day‘s schooling was all that I ever got in my life; that day was sufficient for me, it gave me a distaste to the very sight of a school house. I only learned the names of two letters, one shaped like the gable end of a house roof, and the other shaped like an ox yoke standing on end. At recess in the afternoon the boys got to picking at me while the teacher was gone to dinner, and I had them every one to whip. When the old tyrant came back from dinner and commenced talking saucy, I gave him a good cursing and broke for home. My father very generously gave me my choice, either to go to school or to work on the farm. I gladly accepted the latter, redoubled my energy and always afterwards took particular pains to please my father in all things, because he was so kind as not to compel me to attend school. A threat to send me to school was all the whipping that I ever required to insure obedience; I was more afraid of that than I was of old “Raw-head-and-bloody-bones,” or even the old scratch himself. In 1850, my father died, but I still remained at the homestead, working for the support of my mother and the rest of the family, until I had reached the age of nineteen years, then, on the 30th day of October, 1854, I married Miss Margaret Hampton, the daughter of a highly esteemed citizen of St. Francois county. I built a neat log house, opened a farm for myself, within half a mile of the old homestead, and we went to housekeeping for ourselves. From the time that my father first settled on Big River, we had an abundance of stock, and especially hogs. The range was always good, and as the uplands and hills constituted an endless forest of oaks, the inexhaustible supply of acorns afforded all the food that our hogs required; they roamed in the woods, and of course, many of them became as wild as deer; the wild ones remained among the hills and increased until they became very numerous. Whenever they were fat enough for pork, we were in the habit of going into the woods with our guns and our dogs and killing as many of them as we could.