In the spring of 1831, my father's cousin, John Sherman, a prosperous merchant of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, accompanied by his bride, visited my mother, and proposed to take me into his family and to keep me at school until I was prepared to enter Kenyon College, five miles from Mt. Vernon. This was a kindly offer and was gratefully accepted. But I remember well the sadness I felt, and the tears I shed, over the departure from home into the midst of strangers. The old-fashioned stage coach was then the only medium of travel and the fifty miles between Lancaster and Mt. Vernon were to me a wearisome journey. For days after I arrived at Mt. Vernon I was moping either at the house or at the store, but ere long became accustomed to the change, and commenced my studies in the schools, which, as I remember them, were admirably conducted by teachers of marked ability, among whom were some who became distinguished in professional and business life. One of the families that I became intimate with was that of Mr. Norton, one of whose sons, J. Banning Norton, who lately died in Dallas, Texas, was my constant companion. We studied our lessons together, but frequently had quarrels and fights. It was a "fad" of his to wear his finger-nails very long. On one occasion I pummeled him well, but he scratched my face in the contest. When I went home, marked in this way, I was asked how I came to be so badly scratched and the best answer I could make was that I had fallen on a "splintery log," and this got to be a by-word in the school.
According to the usages of the time I was put early to the study of Latin, which then seemed to be regarded as the necessary foundation for an education. I must confess that during my stay in Mt. Vernon I was rather a troublesome boy, frequently involved in controversies with the teachers, and sometimes punished in the old-fashioned way with the ferule and the switch, which habit I then regarded as tyrannical and now regard as impolitic. I do not believe that the policy of punishment adopted in the schools of those times would be expedient to-day. It tended to foster a constant irritation between the teacher and the pupil.
Among my school adventures at Mt. Vernon was one I heartily regret. We had a teacher by the name of Lord. He was a small man, and not able to cope with several of the boys in the school. We called him "Bunty Lord." One evening after school four boys, of whom I was one, while playing on the commons, found a dead sheep. It was suggested that we carry the sheep into the schoolroom and place it on Lord's seat. This was promptly done and I wrote a Latin couplet, purporting that this was a very worthy sacrifice to a very poor Lord, and placed it on the head of the sheep. The next morning Lord found the sheep and made a great outcry against the indignity. Efforts were made at once to ascertain the actors in this farce, and proof was soon obtained. My handwriting disclosed my part in the case, and the result was a prompt discharge of the culprits from school; but poor Lord lost his place, because of his manifest inability to govern his unruly pupils.