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of his frequent trips to Philadelphia on business, his wife loaded him with commissions. Their furniture was all imported from the East, and what was still more unusual, the yard was planted with shrubbery, which had also to be obtained from the seaboard. The table was abundant, the food well-cooked, the linen of excellent quality, and the children well-clothed. All together very few Ohio boys of that time were brought up in such a well-equipped, well-ordered and genial home.

Of course, it remained very simple, and all hands had to share in the work. If Mark Hanna escaped the scars of that grim struggle for existence in which most Americans of the previous, and to a large extent of his own, generation were engaged, he was certainly not brought up in idleness. As soon as he was old enough, he did his share of work in the field, and he had certain regular chores assigned to him, such as driving the cows to pasture. There were no gentlemen of leisure in a Middle Western town before the War. Of course there were loafers, but they were called loafers. The possession even of considerable means did not entitle a man or his sons to abandon labor with their own hands.

In religion a mitigation of the earlier Puritanism had already taken place. Benjamin Hanna's sons did not remain strict Quakers. One of the laws of the association was that any person who was married outside the church or who was married by anybody but a Quaker minister should be disowned. The application of this rule left Leonard Hanna and all his brothers except Kersey outside the pale. It does not appear, however, that they became active in any other denomination. Their situation made them tolerant, and the process of religious emasculation which begins in toleration usually ends in indifference. Kersey Hanna stated that Leonard, in spite of certain doctrinal disagreements with the Hicksite Quakers, considered himself to be by conviction a member of that sect. Nevertheless, after leaving New Lisbon, he regularly attended the Presbyterian Church, to which his wife belonged, without becoming a Presbyterian himself. Thus in the matter of religious training the earlier rigorous standards were very much relaxed; and Mark Hanna as a boy could, as we shall see, joke with impunity about his religious convictions.

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Mark was assuredly a good-looking boy. Neither he nor his brothers were as tall as the previous generation of Hannas, and Mark himself, when he grew up, looked almost short, because his broad and powerful frame seemed to need a few more inches of height. His uncle Kersey Hanna describes him as short, strong and rugged, with a full round figure. On the other hand, most of his playmates recollect him as almost slender. His complexion was fair, his hair brown and his expression frank, serious and communicative. But both as boy and man the most striking part of his personal appearance were his big, alert, shrewd, searching brown eyes, which, like his tapering fingers, he inherited from his father and which he alone of his father's sons did inherit. In this as in certain other respects Mark Hanna was another version of his father with better health, more energy and more purpose.

In describing the life led by the boys of Mark Hanna's generation in New Lisbon and certain aspects of their education, we have one very excellent authority. Shortly after Senator Hanna's death, a boyhood friend and playmate, Dr. Henry G. McCook, published a "Threnody" on Mr. Hanna, the notes to which contain an abundance of facts and stories about New Lisbon in the forties; and the reader may be referred to that volume in case he would like to know more than I shall tell him about the place, its youthful inhabitants, their occupations and sports.

He says nothing about the first school which Mark Hanna attended, which was kept by his mother's cousin, Miss Hattie Converse. Other schoolmates of Mr. Hanna have, however, furnished several authentic stories about this episode, each of which throws some light upon the school, the boy and the relations. between the boy and his teacher. One lady who went to Miss Converse's school describes her fellow-pupil as pale and slender, but active and mischievous. He was accused of pushing a little boy over a bank on the hillside where a number of children were picking sorrel. Miss Converse evidently thought the offence extremely culpable, for she made him take off his coat, and switched him sharply on his bare arms all of which frightened the little girls and made them burst into tears. On another occasion he was whipped for being late. Before going

to school, he had to drive the cows to pasture, and on this particular morning they got away from him, and caused him, according to his own account, much trouble and loss of time in getting them together again. Miss Converse listened to this excuse for his tardy arrival and doubted its truth. Mark stuck to his story, said that he had never told a lie and was not then telling one. But he was none the less punished. In the end Dr. Hanna heard of the fault, its punishment, privately verified Mark's excuse and rebuked the doubting teacher.

There are other indications that Mark did not get along well with his mother's cousin. One day Miss Converse found him loitering in the street after school was over, instead of making straight for home after the manner of really virtuous lads. Here was an opening, which the excellent pedagog could not overlook; but when she took him to task, he did not tamely submit. He asserted that her authority did not extend beyond the school building and grounds. She asserted that it did. The issue was presented to his parents, and they decided in his favor, and in this decision had the support of public opinion. The episode indicates a disposition to stand up for his personal rights rare in so small a lad, and confidence in him on the part of his parents. It also indicates that even in 1845, in a small Middle Western town, the American boy was coming into his own. There were parents who could understand a boyish propensity to loiter, and there were children who were beginning to discover and insist upon the great American domestic principle of filial authority.

But I do not wonder that Miss Hattie Converse, who played the part of King George in this new struggle for independence, disliked her mischievous pupil. Like many other ladies, she had a peculiar horror of snakes. Several witnesses assert that Mark used to conceal little garter snakes in her text-books, and so cause her the utmost discomfiture. Whether he was switched for this offence, as he very well deserved, the records are silent.

They are also silent as to the length of time that Mark attended Miss Converse's school, and they conflict as to the identity of his next school-teacher. The most renowned and popular school in New Lisbon during Mark's boyhood was kept by a Scotch-Irishman named David Anderson. This man, whose

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