Excerpt from Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography

In the days of my childhood the march of mod ern improvements had hardly begun. There was a small steamboat plying on the Cayuga Lake. There was not a single railwav in the whole State. When I went aa to school in New Jersey, at the age of thirteen, the tedious journey by the stage coach required three days and two nights; every letter from home cost eighteen cents for postage; and the youngsters pored over Webster's spelling books and Morse's geography by tallow candles; for no gas lamps had been dreamed Of and the wood fires were covered, in most houses, by nine O'clock on a Winter evening. There was plain living then, but not a little high thinking. If books were not so superabundant as in these days, they were more thoroughly appreciated and digested.

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