According to the best information obtainable, I was born in a log cabin, where the fireplace was nearly as wide as the cabin. The two doors on opposite sides admitted the horse, dragging the backlog, to enter in one, and go out at the other, and of course the solid puncheon floor defied injury from rough treatment. The crane swung to and fro to regulate the bubbling mush in the pot. The skillet and dutch oven occupied places of favor, instead of the cook stove, to bake the pone or johnny cake, or to parch the corn, or to fry the venison, which was then obtainable in the wilds of Ohio. A curtain at the farther end of the cabin marked the confines of a bed chamber for the "old folk", while the elder children climbed the ladder nailed to the wall to the loft of loose clapboard that rattled when trod upon and where the pallets were so near the roof that the patter of the rain made music to the ear, and the spray of the falling water, not infrequently, would baptize the "tow-heads" left uncovered. Mother used to give us boys mush and milk for supper, and only that, and then turned us out to romp or play or do up chores as the case might be, and sometimes as I now think of it, we must almost have made a burden of life for her, but she always seemed to think that anything we did in the way of antics was funny and about right. It is mete to recall to mind that this date (of my birth) 1830, was just after the first railroad was built (1826) in the United States, just after friction matches were discovered (1827), just when the first locomotive was run (1829), and "daguerreotype" was invented. Following these came the McCormick reaper, immortalizing a name; the introduction of photography (1839), and finally the telegraph (1844) to hand down the name of Morse to all future generations as long as history is recorded. Then came the sewing machine (1846) to lighten the housewife's labor and make possible the vast advance in adornment in dress. The few pioneers left will remember how the teeth were "yanked" out, and he must "grin and bear it" until chloroform came into use (1847), the beginning of easing the pain in surgical work and the near cessation of blood-letting for all sorts of ills to which the race was heir. The world had never heard of artesian wells until after I was eleven years old (1841). Then came the Atlantic cable (1858), and the discovery of coal oil (1859). Time and events combined to revolutionize the affairs of the world. I well remember the "power" printing press (the power being a sturdy negro turning a crank), in a room where I worked a while as "the devil" in Noel's office in Indianapolis (1844) that would print 500 impressions an hour, and I have recently seen the monster living things that would seem to do almost everything but think, run off its 96,000 of completed newspapers in the same period of time, folded and counted.