Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/20

 4 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS farm were annually shipped in flat boats to New Orleans, and his father usually went with the cargo, the crew being composed of men from the neigh borhood who were familiar with the perils of trans portation on the Mississippi river. His first stud ies were prosecuted in the log school-house, and at the age of fifteen he went to Farmers (now Belmont) College, at College Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati. After a two years stay there he be came a student at Miami University, Oxford, where an acquaintance formed at College Hill ripened into a permanent attachment for Miss Car oline L. Scott, who afterward became his wife. The young lady had faith in his star, and did not hesitate to ally her fortunes with his. They were married while he was yet a law student and before he had attained his majority. He graduated fourth in his class in 1852, Milton Sayler taking first hon ors and David Swing standing second. As a boy he distinguished himself as an off-hand debater in the Union Literary Society. From the first he showed an aptitude for think ing on his legs, and a gift of utterance which enabled him to express himself in apt words. At a town meeting, where an abolitionist abused Web ster and Clay for the part they took in the Com promise measures of 1850, the citizens were amazed to see a slender, tow-headed boy of seventeen mount a bench and make a vigorous speech in vin-