Again the spring returned;--I was sixteen years of age. I left the school of my boyhood forever, and commenced again a life of toil. I assisted my cousin, William Pratt, in the cultivation of the farm of my aunt (where I had boarded the previous winter) until September, when I started a journey to the West, in company with my brother William, in search of some spot of ground in the wilderness which we might prepare as our future home. We travelled about two hundred miles on foot, and at length selected a spot for a farm in the woods, about two miles from Oswego, a small town situated on Lake Ontario, in the State of New York. We purchased seventy acres of land, which was covered with an immense growth of timber, principally beech, maple and hemlock. For this we bargained with one Mr. Morgan, and agreed to pay four dollars per acre, in four annual payments with interest--paying some seventy dollars in hand. We then repaired again to the East, and, by dint of hard labor, endeavored to earn the money. Wages were very low, and at length my brother William entirely failed in raising his part of the money for our next installment. The next spring found me in the employment of a wealthy farmer, by the name of Eliphet Bristol, in the neighborhood of my aunt Van Cott's. Here I experienced no kindness; no friendship from my employer or his family. I always commenced work before sunrise, and continued till dark; losing only three days in eight months. I was then but a lad--being only seventeen years of age--and stood in need of fatherly and motherly care and comfort. But they treated a laborer as a machine; not as a human being, possessed of feelings and sympathies in common with his species. _Work_! WORK! _WORK_! you are hired to work. A man that paid for his work should never be weary, faint, or sick; or expect a kind look or word. He agrees to work; we agree to pay him; that is sufficient. He needs no kindness, no affection, no smiles, no encouragement of any kind. Such was their spirit towards me during this eight months of toil. I was glad when the time expired; I felt like one released from prison. I took my wages, and was accompanied by my father to our place in Oswego. Here I paid all my hard earnings to meet the yearly installment due on the land--reserving merely enough to purchase two axes. We then commenced to chop and clear the heavy timber all the time that we could command, extra of earning our board. It was a cold, snowy winter, such as is usual in the northern part of New York. But we earned our living, and chopped and cleared ten acres during the winter and spring; this we surrounded with a fence of rails, and planted with wheat and Indian corn, being in hopes to meet the next payment with the avails of our harvest. CHAPTER II. ------------------------ Thoughts on Religion:--Join the Baptist Church:--Strange Perversion of a Scripture Promise.