farm. Many such cabins are still to be found in the mountains and in the wilder woodlands of our country.

It was in houses like these that some of the most eminent men of our country were born, and to-day we have people s living in palaces whose fathers or grandfathers were born in log cabins and as babies were rocked in sugar troughs. The sugar trough was a short section of a big log, split in two and so hollowed out that it could be used to catch the sap from the maple trees. In those days cans and buckets 10 were scarce and such troughs took their places. A trough was just about big enough to hold the baby and it often formed the rocking and sleeping place instead of a cradle.

Captain Miles Standish lived in a log house and the same is true of Captain John Smith and the other colonists 15 who founded Jamestown. Not far from Berryville, Virginia, I was once shown a log hut in which George Washington dwelt when a boy of sixteen. He was then employed in surveying a great tract of land belonging to Lord Fairfax, who paid him five dollars a day, and he used this hut as his 20 home. It was not more than twelve feet square and of about the same height, having a ridge roof covered with clapboards. The logs which formed the walls had been chopped square and their ends so dovetailed into the corners that but few nails were needed. The cabin had two 25 rooms, one above the other. It was entered by a door of hewed planks. There were no stairs, and the young surveyor who afterwards became the great general and President had to stand upon a stool or climb a ladder to reach his rude sleeping apartment.

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Presidents Lincoln and Garfield were born in log cabins. When Abraham Lincoln was eight years old his father moved from Kentucky to Indiana. The family traveled

on horseback, sleeping at night under the trees. When they reached the site of their future home, they put up a shed of logs and branches, inclosed on three sides, the fourth being open; and in this they lived for a year. By that time Abraham's father had built a log house about eighteen s feet square. The rude structure had but one room, and little Abe's sleeping place was made by fitting some slabs into the logs overhead, making a half loft which was reached by a ladder. The floor was the hard-beaten ground; and a bedstead, a table, and four stools, all 10 hewed out of trees, formed the only furniture. There was a wide fireplace, and by the light of this, little Abraham Lincoln studied his lessons at night.

Garfield's log-cabin home, built by his father, Abram Garfield, was in northern Ohio, near a tract of forest not far 15 from Lake Erie. The nearest house was seven miles away. It was built of rough logs to which the bark and moss still clung. The roof was of pine slabs and the walls were of logs so notched at the corners that they fitted quite close together, the spaces between them being filled up, or 20 chinked, with clay. The house had a floor made of split logs hewn smooth with an ax, and its doors were of planks hung upon wrought-iron hinges. The lock was a wooden bar which rose and fell in a wooden socket as a leather string which ran through a hole in the door was pulled or 25 let go. At night the string was drawn into the house and only those within could open the door. This string was called the latchstring, and from this custom has come the expression denoting hospitality, "The latchstring is always out for you."

In colonial times many of the schoolhouses were made of logs and in some the only desks were boards resting on

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pegs driven at the right height into the logs of the walls, with benches before them. The teacher's seat was in the center of the room and the older scholars sat at these desks, facing the walls with their backs to the teacher. The 5 younger scholars sat on blocks or benches of logs between the desks and the teacher. Such schoolrooms were frequently lighted by panes of white paper greased with lard and fastened to sashes which fitted into the walls. The heat came from great fireplaces, the fuel being sent in by 10 the parents as part pay for the teaching. It is said that the child whose parent did not send his wood in on time was often forced to sit in the coldest part of the schoolroom.

As our country developed, the homes of the colonists began to improve. The cabins became larger. The logs 15 were more smoothly hewed and there were many two-story dwellings. By and by buildings of clapboards or hewn slabs were constructed. Then sawmills were erected and boards came into use. In Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, the people soon began to build dwellings 20 of stone. The first bricks were sent across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe. They were burned bricks of red and black, and were laid in a checkerboard fashion. The windows were made of tiny glass panes, which were also imported. Many of these houses still stand.

How the World is Housed.

1. Imagine that you are an American pioneer. Explain to the class how your first house in the wilderness was built.

2.

Make a sketch of the schoolhouse described in this selection. Bring to class all the pictures of log houses you can find.

3. Interview some old citizen in your community and report what he or she tells you about the homes of the pioneers.

A TRUE HERO

BY JAMES BALDWIN

OHN STIRLING was a typical pioneer of the clas

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who may be called the Makers of the Northwest. He was one of those who came from the South for conscience' sake; he could not bear to see human beings in bondage; he wanted to bring up his children in a land s dedicated to freedom. He could trace his ancestry for four centuries through a long line of English gentry, and every one of his forefathers had been a champion of liberty. The story of his life in the Northwest is but the story of a thousand others as brave, as self-sacrificing, as ingenious, as industrious, as he.

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In a single small wagon drawn by two horses, John Stirling brought his family and his household goods across the mountains by way of Cumberland Gap and through the half-settled districts of Kentucky. He crossed the 15 Ohio near the mouth of the Great Miami, and then made his way northwestwardly into the almost unbroken wilderness, looking for a suitable place to make his home. The roads for hundreds of miles were little better than wood paths; over a part of the course he was obliged to cut his 20 own way among the fallen trees and through thick underwoods. The journey from beginning to end occupied nearly six weeks, and yet John Stirling and his family were thankful that it had been so short.

Having selected the spot for his farm, the pioneer's 25 next care was to become its possessor. He bought it

from the Government at a dollar and a quarter an acre, and when this was paid he had scarcely a cent left. But of what use would money be in a place where there was nothing to buy?

5 With the help of his two boys he felled trees and cleared a small place for the homestead. He cut the logs into proper lengths and with them built the walls of a rude. cabin. He hewed rough puncheons for the floor, rived long boards for the roof, made a great fireplace of flat 10 stones, built a chimney of sticks and clay, and within five days had finished a habitation that was to be the shelter and home of the family for twice that many years. Not a nail or a brick was used in the construction of that house nails and bricks were luxuries which the onward 15 march of civilization would by and by bring into that region, but the time for such luxuries was not yet.

For weeks, during that first spring in the forest, the doorway of the cabin was closed simply by hanging a bedquilt loosely from the top, like a kind of curtain. The wolves 20 howled around the cabin at night; the pioneer was not disturbed by such sounds the hunger wolf was more to be dreaded than the gray beast that skulked in the thickets. Until his first small crop of corn had ripened he was by no means sure of food for the winter. He carried his grain 25 fifteen miles to mill and waited for it to be ground in order not to disappoint the expectant family, hungry for bread and eagerly waiting for the grist of meal.

The first twelve months were months of sore trial; but the end of the year found John Stirling firmly established 30 in his new home and beyond the reach of want. Even in the very darkest moments, he saw in imagination the wilderness giving place to fields of yellow grain and orchards of