Mary's education had been carefully conducted. She had not only the advantages of the common town school and home culture, but was a pupil of Mary Lyon, when she taught in Buckland, and afterward of Miss Grant, at Ipswich. At the age of sixteen she taught her first school, in Williamstown, Mass. As she used to tell the story, she taught for a dollar a week, and, at the end of her first quarter, brought the $12 home and gave it to her father, as a recognition of what he had expended for her education. It was a joy to me to meet, the other day in Chicago, Mrs. Judge Osborne, who was one of the scholars in this school, as it was in her father's family; and who spoke very affectionately of Mary Ann Longley, her teacher. Contrasted with the present appliances for education in all the towns, and many of the country districts also, the common schools in Ohio, when I was a boy, were very poorly equipped. My first school-house was a log cabin, with a large open fireplace, a window with four lights of glass where the master's seat was, while on the other two sides a log was cut out and old newspapers pasted over the hole through which the light was supposed to come, and the seats were benches made of slabs. One of my first teachers was a drunken Irishman, who often visited the tavern near by and came back to sleep the greater part of the afternoon. This gave us a long play spell. But he was a terrible master for the remainder of the day. Notwithstanding these difficulties in the way of education, we managed to learn a good deal. Sabbath-schools had not reached the efficiency they now have; but we children were taught carefully at home. We were obliged to commit to memory the Shorter Catechism, and every few months the good minister came around to see how well we could repeat it. All through my life this summary of Christian doctrine--not perfect indeed, and not to be quoted as authority equal to the Scriptures, as it sometimes is--has been to me of incalculable advantage. What I understood not then I have come to understand better since, with the opening of the Word and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. If I were a boy again, I would learn the Shorter Catechism.