He had to work after he was twelve years of age.

In those days we were all poor, and it took hard knocks to get on.

He worked clearing the fields yonder with his brother, and then cut cord-wood, and did other farm labor to get the necessities of life for his mother and sisters.
"I remember when he was fourteen years of age, he went away to work at Daniel Morse's, not four miles down the road from here, and after the labors of the day he sat down to listen to the conversation of a teacher in one of the schools of Cleveland, when it was yet a village, who had called.

The talk of the educated man pleased the boy, and, while intent upon his story, a daughter of the man for whom he was working informed the future President with great dignity that it was time that _servants_ were in bed, and that she preferred his absence to his presence.
"Nothing that ever happened to him so severely stung him as this affront.

In his youth he could never refer to it without indignation, and almost immediately he left Mr.Morse's employ and went on the canal.
He said to me then that those people should live to see the day when they would not care to insult him.
"His experience on the canal was a severe one, but perhaps useful.