II
The first five years of his life were spent in the house with the “two front doors” and differed in no wise from the early childhood of the other children of the wilderness community except that he had more of the comforts than fell to the lot of many others. The only picture of the future senator of that period that is preserved is in the memory of the venerable sister—a picture of the boy in his favorite amusement, sitting astride an old discarded saddle on a carpenter horse with a pair of saddle bags filled with powders and bottles, going to visit an imaginary patient, and solemnly giving instructions to “give him one powder every hour till Monday, and if he ’plains of it give it to him agin.”
In 1854 Doctor Kern moved with his family to Warren county, Iowa, where the next nine years were spent near Indianola in pleasant surroundings, with congenial neighbors, and in the midst of plenty. Here we get our first glimpse of the future partisan in an incident connected with the Lincoln-Douglas campaign of 1860. From his earliest boyhood he knew he was a Democrat and he took no pains to conceal the fact. During the dramatic campaign of 1860 he frequently drove to Indianola with a load of wood, and on these expeditions he attracted attention by his vociferous yelling for Douglas. On going to town after the election, he was accosted by a friend of his father’s with the query as to how he felt over the result.
“Like Lazarus,” snapped the eleven-year-old partisan.
“Why, how is that?” he was asked.
“Like I’d been licked by the dogs,” was the quick retort.
After the death of Mrs. Kern the doctor soon lost his taste for far western life and in 1865 he returned with his two children to Alto, which was to remain the home of the family until after the only son commenced his professional career.
At the time young John returned to the house of his nativity, a tall, lightly built youth of fifteen, he immediately was accorded a position of leadership among the boys and girls of his own age. The social activities of the community were of a simple nature and revolved about the church. The young people met at the Sunday school services in the old log Methodist church, and at the Cobb church a mile distant from the village, for gossip and flirtations, and it was in connection with the Sunday school that the future statesman first attracted attention to his precocious ability. I am indebted to Mr. Jackson Morrow, a life-long friend, for a description of this event. “John was then an active member of the Alto Methodist Sunday school,” he writes. “In that day the annual Sunday school celebration was the great social event of the community. In the community were numerous country churches and each maintaining its Sunday school. It was during the summer of 1865 that there was held in a beautiful grove adjoining Alto a celebration of rather more than ordinary merit. It was an all-day affair. The forenoon was devoted to singing by the various schools in attendance and an address by a local celebrity. Then followed the picnic dinner—a sumptuous affair requiring an hour and a half for its disposal. The afternoon was largely given over to recitations and the reading of original papers by selected members of the several schools. John Kern represented the Alto school with a paper. His theme was Temperance. He attacked the saloon and drunkenness in a vigorous manner. It was really an able paper and read in his clear, incisive and earnest manner captured the large audience. From every quarter the comment was heard that if a mere boy could make such an address much could be expected of him when he became a man. The paper was singled out for publication in the county paper.”
About this time he entered the Old Kokomo Normal, an educational institution much superior to most of the Indiana schools of that period. The building, a commodious one, had been erected several years before by the people of Kokomo and the surrounding country with the view to giving their children the advantage of training in the elements of higher learning and to fit them for teaching in the public schools. The head of the school at the time was Prof. E. N. Fay, a college graduate and a man of scholarly attainments, and he had surrounded himself with a competent corps of assistants. While attending the Normal young Kern lived at his home in Alto, riding his horse to Kokomo in the morning and returning in the evening. For the sake of economy he took his lunch with him. The six-mile stretch of mud road between his home and the county seat was impassable during much of the winter except on horseback. In zero weather the ambitious youth suffered severely, but having developed the habit of declaiming his lessons, and making speeches to his nag during these trips, he managed to neutralize the effect of the weather by vigorous gesticulation and an unsparing exercise of his lungs.
At the Normal young Kern is described by Mr. Morrow as “a brilliant scholar but not a plodder.” He seemed to absorb the matter of the textbooks without effort. “In the study of English Grammar he particularly excelled,” writes Morrow. “He studied language not to get its dull formulas, but to know how most forcibly and clearly to express his thoughts.”
It was during his Normal days that Kern determined definitely upon the study of law.
While Doctor Kern would have defrayed the expenses of his son’s legal education, the latter was of an independent nature and preferred to pay his own way. With the view to making the money required for a course of legal instructions in a university, he took the examination for a teacher’s license before he was sixteen, and while the examination was conducted by Rawson Vaile, a graduate of Amherst College and a stickler for thoroughness, he made a very high grade and was granted a twenty-four months’ license, which was the highest permissible by the county examiner. Here enters the pedagogue.