“Exactly,” answered Mr. Apricot, hardly heeding the question,—“of the Mexican Civil War.”
“Was he under Lincoln?” I asked.
“OVER Lincoln,” corrected Mr. Apricot gravely. And he added,—“It is always strange to me the way in which the present generation regards Abraham Lincoln. To us, of course, at the time of which I speak, Lincoln was simply one of ourselves.”
“In 1866?” I asked.
“This was 1856,” said Mr. Apricot. “He came often to my father’s cabin, sitting down with us to our humble meal of potatoes and whiskey (we lived with a simplicity which of course you could not possibly understand), and would spend the evening talking with my father over the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. We children used to stand beside them listening open-mouthed beside the fire in our plain leather night-gowns. I shall never forget how I was thrilled when I first heard Lincoln lay down his famous theory of the territorial jurisdiction of Congress as affected by the Supreme Court decision of 1857. I was only nine years old at the time, but it thrilled me!”
“Is it possible!” I exclaimed, “how ever could you understand it?”
“Ah! my friend,” said Mr. Apricot, almost sadly, “in THOSE days the youth of the United States were EDUCATED in the real sense of the word. We children followed the decisions of the Supreme Court with breathless interest. Our books were few but they were GOOD. We had nothing to read but the law reports, the agriculture reports, the weather bulletins and the almanacs. But we read them carefully from cover to cover. How few boys have the industry to do so now, and yet how many of our greatest men were educated on practically nothing else except the law reports and the almanacs. Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson, Johnson,”—Mr. Apricot had relapsed into his sing-song voice, and his eye had a sort of misty perplexity in it as he went on,—“Harrison, Thomson, Peterson, Emerson—”
I thought it better to stop him.
“But you were speaking,” I said, “of the winter of eighteen fifty-six.”
“Of eighteen forty-six,” corrected Mr. Apricot. “I shall never forget it. How distinctly I remember,—I was only a boy then, in fact a mere lad,—fighting my way to school. The snow lay in some places as deep as ten feet”— Mr. Apricot paused—“and in others twenty. But we made our way to school in spite of it. No boys of to-day,—nor, for the matter of that, even men such as you,—would think of attempting it. But we were keen, anxious to learn. Our school was our delight. Our teacher was our friend. Our books were our companions. We gladly trudged five miles to school every morning and seven miles back at night, did chores till midnight, studied algebra by candlelight”—here Mr. Apricot’s voice had fallen into its characteristic sing-song, and his eyes were vacant—“rose before daylight, dressed by lamplight, fed the hogs by lantern-light, fetched the cows by twilight—”