People may have been poor in accumulated wealth, but it was not felt or despised. A father with eight or ten robust sons had a sure foundation for a hope to see the destruction of the surrounding forest, cultivation of the soil, and the transformation of a portion of the wilderness into fields of waving grain, fruits and flowers. It is possible, and has been no uncommon thing for heads of large families to live to see their great-great-grand-children; for it would seem true, as in history, longevity and children are very nearly related. As a rule, large families are healthy, having inherited a full measure of vital resistance. Records of centenarians show that both males and females of those who have gone into the second century have been nearly all parents of large families; and read quite similar to the following: “Alexander Hockaday has just celebrated his one hundred and twelfth birthday. His wife, a few years younger, is still living. They were blessed with twelve children, eleven of whom are living near the aged couple with their numerous posterity.” No doubt the existing conditions of a desirable new country, and the exemption from avarice, penury or speculation, with the enjoyment of that happy state unknown to wealth, want or war, were favorable to longevity and natural increase. States of the mind and existing impressions, like acquired habits, are transmissible as certainly as that of the resemblance of physical and moral qualities. And with the pioneer posterity, much of that strong manifestation of character and mental endowment was due to the multiplicity and salutary combinations of causes. Blood will tell, but in addition to descent, posterity had all the winning influences of a quiet, simple and easy mode of living--pure air, earth and water, filled with inspiration to greatness and dispensed by nature to those who delight to worship within her temple and partake wisdom from beasts, birds and flowers. FOOTNOTES: [6] History United States, by C. A. Goodrich, 1823: “This fund, in May 1821, amounted to one million seven hundred thousand dollars--the yearly income of which, together with twelve thousand dollars of the public taxes, is annually devoted to the maintenance of common school masters in every town in the state. The amount paid to the towns from this fund, in 1818, was more than seventy thousand dollars--a greater sum by twenty-two thousand dollars than the whole state tax amounted to in the year preceding.” [7] Mathews. [8] “The Builders of the Nation.” CHAPTER III. OHIO--PROFESSIONS: MEDICAL, MINISTERIAL, AND LEGAL. “The subject of practical education has occupied the attention of every enlightened nation, and has ever been one of intense interest to the reflecting portion of this country. It has been a universally-received axiom, that the foundations of a republic must be in the information of its people.”[9]