My pupils were boys and girls of all sizes and qualities, and while it would be too much to say that I made the best teacher of mathematics in the county, I think I helped them in their reading, writing, and spelling, which after all are more important than algebra. On Saturday I usually went to town, for I had in some way become acquainted with the principal of a little normal school which was being carried on in Morris by a young Quaker from Philadelphia. Prof. Forsythe soon recognized in me something more than the ordinary "elocutionist" and readily aided me in securing a class in oratory among his students.
This work and Forsythe's comradeship helped me to bear the tedium of my work in the country. No Saturday was too stormy, and the roads were never too deep with snow to keep me from my weekly visit to Morris where I came in contact with people nearer to my ways of thinking and living.
But after all this was but the final section of my eastern excursion—for as the spring winds set in, the call of "the sunset regions" again overcame my love of cities. The rush to Dakota in March was greater than ever before and a power stronger than my will drew me back to the line of the middle border which had moved on into the Missouri Valley, carrying my people with it. As the spring odors filled my nostrils, my wish to emigrate was like that of the birds. "Out there is my share of the government land—and, if I am to carry out my plan of fitting myself for a professorship," I argued—"these claims are worth securing. My rights to the public domain are as good as any other man's."
My recollections of the James River Valley were all pleasant. My brother and father both wrote urging me to come and secure a claim, and so at last I replied, "I'll come as soon as my school is out," thus committing all my future to the hazard of the homestead.
And so it came about that in the second spring after setting my face to the east I planned a return to the Border. I had had my glimpse of Boston, New York and Washington. I was twenty-three years of age, and eager to revisit the plain whereon my father with the faith of a pioneer, was again upturning the sod and building a fourth home. And yet, Son of the Middle Border—I had discovered that I was also a Grandson of New England.