Like many others, I was brought up to be honest and hard-working from the beginning. According to ordinary standards, I was living as I should. Yet when I heard of college, and had hopes of going to one, a subtle change came over my whole life. While the old duties were performed in the old way, at the same time a complete revolution was taking place within me. The imagination and will readjusted everything to the new and larger sphere for which I hoped. Since no one thus far had gone to college from our frontier community, some of the neighbors thought me to be a foolish dreamer. What good would it do me anyway, was what they wanted to know, since I was already good in "figgers"? When I was probably fourteen years old, a young man told me of some one in another township who was going to study Algebra. "What is that?" I asked. "Well," he said, "it is something like Arithmetic, only they use letters instead of figures." "Now that," I promptly told him, "sounds foolish. Why aren't figures good enough?" "Ah," said the young man's father, "Algebra is a mighty fine study! You have noticed that merchants mark the price of their goods with letters. Now if you know Algebra they can't cheat you." So I made up my mind then and there that I would study Algebra. My first experience with college catalogues, which came a little later, was both interesting and amusing. I had often wondered what there could possibly be to study beyond history, geography, and the three "R's." But at last with a college catalogue in my hands here it was: De Amicitia, De Corona, Trigonometry, etc. After reading pages of unheard-of and unpronounceable words, I scarcely knew whether it was about something to eat or something to wear. Theological terms seemed plain English by comparison. In those primitive days it took one more year of preparation to enter the classical course than it did the scientific. For that reason alone I promptly decided to take the classical. Although I knew nothing of what either course was really about or what it was good for, yet I did not want to bear the stigma of any short cut. I wanted to learn it "all." Though it did not take long to learn what the college course was about, yet it did take some good faithful application to prepare for entrance examinations.