A short time before execution, John Brown said--“I know the very errors by which my scheme was marred were decreed before the world was made. And I had no more to do with the course I pursued than a shot leaving a cannon has to do with the spot where it shall fall.” That hunger and thirst for knowledge which prevailed in the North-west seemed to contradict all theories of man’s proneness under favorable circumstances to degenerate, and favors the theory advanced by the hero of Ossawatomie in regard to power and purpose. Some of the first generation of boys of Ohio (those that lived in the territory) previous to 1796 were born elsewhere to disappoint the Indians, but were all the same shareholders of the great estate. And at the early dawn of the present century many of these young men found their way to Eastern institutions of learning, taking the front in physical and mental culture, as they did afterward in positions of national honor. As boys, squirrel hunters, men, scholars, lawyers, soldiers, civilians, and statesmen, history shows they filled their places well as American models of superior manhood. Poor as the isolated inhabitants were in regard to worldly goods, they had an abundance of that which gave vitality, energy, and power of will to do. It was no uncommon thing for boys in this vast forest to obtain by their own efforts full preparation to enter college, and with a knapsack of luncheon, _tinder-box_, and scantily-filled purse, walk hundreds of miles to a seat of learning, and there remain four years without seeing home or friends until they obtained the high honors of the institution. Ex-Governor Seaberry Ford is but the sample of many. When it came time to go to college, the family of the young squirrel hunter was living in a log cabin in the backwoods of Ohio. His ambition, however, was for Yale, and so expressed it. His father replied, “How are you to get there!” The answer was, “I can walk,” and did walk--reached Yale, where he remained the “boss” young man of the town and institution for four years, and returned to Ohio with the first diploma issued by that college to an Ohio boy. Many years without public schools papers or libraries did not dampen the ardor of the young for knowledge. The inhabitants were destitute of a circulating medium, but managed to keep apace with all the world in that synonym for power. The means employed, as given in the autobiography of one of the first two college graduates in the North-west, illustrates well the thousands of that and later dates who managed to obtain books, and worked their way to the highest standard of education. The Hon. Thomas Ewing says--“About this time” (1803) “the neighbors in our and the surrounding settlements met and agreed to purchase books and make a common library. They were all poor and subscriptions small, but they raised in all about one hundred dollars.