“All my accumulated wealth, ten coon-skins, went into the fund, and Squire Sam Brown, of Sunday Creek, who was going to Boston, was charged with the purchase. After the absence of many weeks he brought the books to Captain Ben Brown’s in a sack on a pack-horse. I was present at the untying of the sack and pouring out the treasure. There were about sixty volumes, I think, and well selected; the library of the Vatican was nothing to it, and there never was a library better read. This with occasional additions furnished me with reading while I remained at home. “Dec. 17, 1804, the library was fully established and christened, ‘The Coon-skin Library,’ and a librarian duly elected by shareholders.” Five years later, at the age of nineteen, with consent of his father, young Ewing left home to procure means to obtain a collegiate education. He set out on foot and found his way through the woods from his home in Athens county to the Ohio river, and from thence to the Kanawha Salt Works, where he engaged as a day laborer, and in three months saved enough money to pay his way at school through the winter at Athens College. He became well satisfied with the success so far, and in the spring returned to the Salt Works and made money enough to pay off some indebtedness that was troubling his father, devoting the winter to the study of some new books obtained by the “Coon-skin Library.” The third year he returned with enough to induce him to enter college as a regular student, where he remained until 1815; and, after taking the degree of A. M., returned to the Salt Works, and earned enough to aid in the study of law. Thus, ten years were spent as a necessary apprenticeship--performing the arduous and monotonous labors of boiling salt, that he might be enabled to cultivate the various talents nature had so bounteously bestowed upon him, and at the same time avoid financial embarrassments. Many thousands of squirrel hunters since have imitated the example of this great man, and have arisen to high eminence, but none--not one--to the height of “The Ohio Salt-boiler”--the greatest man America ever produced. In stature Mr. Ewing was six feet two inches tall--well proportioned, with remarkable physical ability. It is related--that many years after athletical exercises had been lain aside for law, on passing near the old court-house in Lancaster, Ohio, he found a crowd of able-bodied men who had been trying to throw an ax, handle and all, over the building, but it could not be done. Mr. Ewing halted, and took the ax by the handle and sent it sailing five feet or more above the building and passed on. Mr. Ewing was great from the fact he was familiar with the little things of life, as well as the greater matters in the supreme court, where he chiefly practiced. Daniel Webster acknowledged Mr. Ewing’s superior abilities in seeking his aid in his difficult and weighty cases.