Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

204 ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
marching the procession turned at proper angles to describe
a rail fence, called a "worm fence," such as "the Rail-SpHtter,"
Lincoln, had made in his youth. The air was full of the tramp
of young men who had but a short time before vowed allegiance
to the Union, and who sang with the lusty voices of youth,
"We are coming. Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
more!" It is not the purpose of these sketches to write the
history of all that dark and cloudy period when the fate of
our country hung in the balance, nor to depict the anxiety
everywhere. North and South, that filled our land. I can
only leave behind a little impression of those wild and exciting
days of the presidential campaign of i860. It was and is
unique in the history of our country, and we who lived then
can never be as we were before; the anxieties of the times
burned themselves into our souls.
I recall how active Tom Corwin was in this campaign; his
home was in Lebanon, the county seat of Warren County.
I went down to Lebanon to hear him speak. He was an aboli-
tionist, as was our father. I saw the parade and the fireworks,
but as Cal Hunt Tilton's baby got coHc, I regretfully departed
with his mother just before the speech, so I neither saw nor
heard the man who was a leader at this important crisis. Thus
it was that I missed my one opportunity to hear a great orator
in the greatest presidential campaign our country has known,
all on account of little Howard 's untimely colic.
As I sit here after a long stretch of years and read the sequel
of the life stories of the friends of our youth, with the preacher
I say, "All is vanity!" So many mistakes made in early life
follow one all the days. I think of dear Uncle John Hunt,
and how free and generous he was with the Hunt boys; and if
they had been simple, good, industrious farmers, how much
better it would have been. The education he gave them they
wasted. Money, like knowledge, is a great power either for
good or evil. When I went to Uncle Spencer's they were
looking for Uncle John and Aunt Abbie home from a visit to
Logansport, Indiana, as I remember. As I stated in the
beginning of the recital, they had their own room at Uncle
Spencer's; it was an upper corner room, fronting toward the