They always had their pockets full of things to give away, and I am satisfied that they came by none of them honestly, for they were very poor, and at home but seldom had enough even to eat. A habit of theirs was to throw stones with great accuracy, a collection of which they carried around in their pockets, ready for use, making long journeys to the creek bottoms to select them. They always went home with Guinea-hens or geese in their possession, which they said had been “given to them,” but which they had really knocked over in the road near farmers’ houses. They could kill more squirrels and quails by throwing than others of a similar age could by shooting, and it will be imagined that their failings were but seldom mentioned, for they were dangerous adversaries, though usually peaceable enough. The teacher of this school at the time of which I now write--to be more explicit, when I was eleven years old, for what I have already written is a hurried retrospect covering a period of six years--was a very young and pretty girl named Agnes Deming, certainly not over sixteen and I doubt if that, who came from a neighborhood north of Fairview, where her widowed mother lived with an eccentric brother, and although it was as poor as ours, she spoke of it in such a way--not boastingly, but tenderly and reverently--that we thought of the community of Smoky Hill as a very superior one. Her father, of whom she talked a great deal, had been captain of a sailing vessel, as I learned a little at a time, and before his death they lived in a town by the sea, where his ship loaded. Of the town, however, which was called Bradford, she had but slight recollection, for when a very little girl she was sent away to school, and came home only at long intervals to welcome her father, who was often away a year at a time. When ten years old, and after the ship had been absent a long time, she was sent for hurriedly one day, and told on her arrival that her father’s ship had gone down at sea; that all on board were lost, and that they were going West to live with her uncle, an eccentric man whom she had never seen. After a few months of preparation, during which time their effects were converted into money, they commenced their journey to the country in which they had since lived. When she was fourteen years old her uncle found her a place to teach a summer school, and, giving satisfaction in spite of her tender years, she had followed the calling since, her second engagement being in our neighborhood. I remember how generally it was said on her arrival that she would not do, as she was very young, but before the summer was over she somehow convinced her patrons that she would do, very well, as she was thoughtful and intelligent, and competent in every way.