[Illustration: SIMON YOUNG AND WIFE.] Possessing a fair knowledge of simple music, he also, with the small means at command, taught the children to sing. After leading them through the simplest airs, he taught them, and with great success, to sing in four parts, and the fact that out of a class of fifteen ten were able to read music by sight, gave him great encouragement in that branch of his work. Beginning life anew, house building and cultivating the ground for the support of a large family left him scarcely any leisure for self-improvement, but what he was able to do he did faithfully. In cultivating the land, wife and children assisted, thus lightening the heavy duties of the husband and father. No work was allowed to supersede that which was the dearest aim and object of his whole life, namely, seeking to instill knowledge into the minds of the young, and helping to train them to love what is good and pure and true, and to inspire them to search for themselves the treasures of knowledge that may be obtained in the works of other men, some few volumes of which he possessed. He also organized a Sunday school, at first taking all the labor upon himself, and, as the necessity arose, appointing others to assist him. In December of 1864 six of the young people—three of the older settlers and three of the others—were united in the bonds of matrimony, the wedding taking place on Christmas day. To the younger portion of the community, at least, the excitement of a triple wedding was a very pleasant thing to happen to break the monotony of their quiet and secluded lives.