IN early days there was an empty cabin in our neighborhood at one time, and a man came along and wanted to teach school, if he could get fifteen scholars he would teach three months for one dollar and fifty cents per scholar, and would take his pay in corn, wheat, pork, beans, honey, beeswax, or anything, and he boarded around among the families who sent pupils. All right; and the men went into the woods and cut some “linn” (linden) trees and split them open and hewed some of the worst splinters off the flat side and bored holes and put legs in the round side and made us some good benches; we took the oxen and hauled up some wood and Mr. Anderson set in to teach. He did not know much more than a goat, but that made no difference. Brady Phelps’ children would fetch their little, speckled, bench-legged “fiste”, and he would stay in the house, under their bench, and when we would stick our feet back under the bench and touch him he would bite us on the heel. Frank Perryman was just about my age and just about as mean; at the noon hour he and I would get a wild grape-vine, and one take hold of either end and get outside the door, then send a boy in to run him out, and when he jumped to go over the grape-vine we would fetch a yank and throw that dog twenty feet high; when we had sent him up a few times he quit the school of his own free will and accord. [Illustration] Shelbyville in Early Days. IN our early boyhood Shelbyville, our county seat, was a small place; General W. F. Thornton kept store just North of where the court house now stands; Roundy & Dexter kept store just West of the courthouse; Dan. Earp kept saloon on the South; Ben. Talman kept tavern on the East; Rand Higgins run the river mill; Burrel Roberts was county clerk; Ed. Shallenbarger was surveyor; E. A. Douthit was sheriff and collector. Joseph Oliver was there, also the Trembles, Tacketts, Cutler’s, and C. Woodard. John D. Bruster run the tan-yard on the hill. Anthony Thornton was the leading lawyer; Sam’l W. Moulton came there when we were a boy. We remember hearing Abraham Lincoln plead a divorce case in the old court house sixty years ago. At that time the lawyers traveled from place to place on horseback, and carried their books in their saddle-bags. Wild Animals. IN our boyhood the bears and panthers were mostly killed out, but there was a great many wolves and wildcats, but we did not fear the wild animals half so much as we did the rattlesnake and spreading viper, both of which was very plentiful, especially the rattlesnake; while the other snakes would run away, they would coil up and make ready to strike. The timber rattlesnake grew to be very large, I have seen them at least four feet long and very thick to their length, but the spots on them were a bright copper color and they were easily seen; the prairie rattlesnake was much smaller, of a dirt color, and hard to see. The Muley Steer.