Chapter I: Childhood and Early Youth

I

In the forties the constant stream of sturdy pioneers pouring into Indiana from the eastern and southern states began the work of redeeming the state from the wilderness. These early settlers were a hardy folk, adventurous, inured to toil, and strong of character. In 1840 the first white man settled in Harrison township in Howard county, albeit the locality had been a paradise for trappers for several years before a permanent settlement was made. It was a country of rich soil, but heavily wooded with primeval forests, and many years of assiduous labor were to intervene before the stumps could be cleared from the fields or the highways be made at all passable in bad weather. Almost immediately after the first white man established a permanent home in the township a water mill was built, and about it a settlement sprang up which took the name of Alto. Soon the village boasted--and the word is used advisedly--three stores, three cabinet shops, a blacksmith shop, a boot and shoe shop, and during the first two years of its existence it did as much business as Kokomo, a few miles distant. Here was constructed the first church in the township, a large one built of logs, which was to serve as a place of worship for many years. And in the middle of the first decade of the existence of this settlement in the wilderness Dr. Jacob Harrison Kern moved to the village, built a home and opened an office.

Doctor Kern’s great grandfather, Adam Kern, had emigrated from Germany about the middle of the eighteenth century, with ten children, seven of whom were boys, and settled in Frederick county, Virginia. One of his sons, the grandfather of Doctor Kern, had made his home at Kernstown, Virginia, about four miles south of Winchester, where six sons were born, the eldest, Nicholas, and the father of the future medical adviser of Alto, having first looked out upon the world on the third anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and in the midst of the revolutionary war. He was the father of ten children, the sixth of whom, born in December, 1813, was christened Jacob Harrison. In 1838 Dr. Kern, accompanied by three of his brothers, moved to Shelby county, Indiana, bringing with them an old negro woman known as “Aunt Giny,” whom they set free. A little later the doctor, who appears to have been a victim of the wanderlust after leaving his Virginia home until his ultimate return, moved to Warren county, Ohio, where he began the practice of medicine. Here he met and married a Nancy Ligget, who is remembered by her daughter as “a comely woman, tall, rather slender and with black hair and eyes.” Here the first child, Sally, was born in 1845, and soon after this event the little family moved to Alto.

Doctor Kern was a rather stern, grimly serious man, of exceptional professional capacity, and strong mentality, and his reputation as a physician spread through the surrounding country, resulting in an extensive practice for miles about. He was what is popularly known as a “strong character,” possessed of little of the sense of humor with which his more celebrated son was so abundantly gifted. Asked for a description or characterization of him, the few, now living, who remember him almost invariably hesitate and begin with the comment, “Well, it is rather difficult to describe him. He was an unusual man--different from most men. He had a fine mind and a fine character.” His son remembered him with an affection in which admiration predominated. He was cast in the Puritanic mould, abhorring indolence and vice, preaching and practicing frugality and toil.

At the edge of the village he built a home which was considered a pretentious structure for the time and place, although it consisted of but two rooms. The fact that instead of being a rough log hut it was weatherboarded and had “two front doors” was enough to stamp it in the wilderness as the abode of the patrician of the community.

Here on December 20, 1849, just nine years after the first white man settled in the township, John Worth Kern was born.

II

The first five years of his life were spent in the house with the “two front doors” and differed in no wise from the early childhood of the other children of the wilderness community except that he had more of the comforts than fell to the lot of many others. The only picture of the future senator of that period that is preserved is in the memory of the venerable sister--a picture of the boy in his favorite amusement, sitting astride an old discarded saddle on a carpenter horse with a pair of saddle bags filled with powders and bottles, going to visit an imaginary patient, and solemnly giving instructions to “give him one powder every hour till Monday, and if he ’plains of it give it to him agin.”

In 1854 Doctor Kern moved with his family to Warren county, Iowa, where the next nine years were spent near Indianola in pleasant surroundings, with congenial neighbors, and in the midst of plenty. Here we get our first glimpse of the future partisan in an incident connected with the Lincoln-Douglas campaign of 1860. From his earliest boyhood he knew he was a Democrat and he took no pains to conceal the fact. During the dramatic campaign of 1860 he frequently drove to Indianola with a load of wood, and on these expeditions he attracted attention by his vociferous yelling for Douglas. On going to town after the election, he was accosted by a friend of his father’s with the query as to how he felt over the result.

“Like Lazarus,” snapped the eleven-year-old partisan.

“Why, how is that?” he was asked.

“Like I’d been licked by the dogs,” was the quick retort.

After the death of Mrs. Kern the doctor soon lost his taste for far western life and in 1865 he returned with his two children to Alto, which was to remain the home of the family until after the only son commenced his professional career.

At the time young John returned to the house of his nativity, a tall, lightly built youth of fifteen, he immediately was accorded a position of leadership among the boys and girls of his own age. The social activities of the community were of a simple nature and revolved about the church. The young people met at the Sunday school services in the old log Methodist church, and at the Cobb church a mile distant from the village, for gossip and flirtations, and it was in connection with the Sunday school that the future statesman first attracted attention to his precocious ability. I am indebted to Mr. Jackson Morrow, a life-long friend, for a description of this event. “John was then an active member of the Alto Methodist Sunday school,” he writes. “In that day the annual Sunday school celebration was the great social event of the community. In the community were numerous country churches and each maintaining its Sunday school. It was during the summer of 1865 that there was held in a beautiful grove adjoining Alto a celebration of rather more than ordinary merit. It was an all-day affair. The forenoon was devoted to singing by the various schools in attendance and an address by a local celebrity. Then followed the picnic dinner--a sumptuous affair requiring an hour and a half for its disposal. The afternoon was largely given over to recitations and the reading of original papers by selected members of the several schools. John Kern represented the Alto school with a paper. His theme was Temperance. He attacked the saloon and drunkenness in a vigorous manner. It was really an able paper and read in his clear, incisive and earnest manner captured the large audience. From every quarter the comment was heard that if a mere boy could make such an address much could be expected of him when he became a man. The paper was singled out for publication in the county paper.”

About this time he entered the Old Kokomo Normal, an educational institution much superior to most of the Indiana schools of that period. The building, a commodious one, had been erected several years before by the people of Kokomo and the surrounding country with the view to giving their children the advantage of training in the elements of higher learning and to fit them for teaching in the public schools. The head of the school at the time was Prof. E. N. Fay, a college graduate and a man of scholarly attainments, and he had surrounded himself with a competent corps of assistants. While attending the Normal young Kern lived at his home in Alto, riding his horse to Kokomo in the morning and returning in the evening. For the sake of economy he took his lunch with him. The six-mile stretch of mud road between his home and the county seat was impassable during much of the winter except on horseback. In zero weather the ambitious youth suffered severely, but having developed the habit of declaiming his lessons, and making speeches to his nag during these trips, he managed to neutralize the effect of the weather by vigorous gesticulation and an unsparing exercise of his lungs.

At the Normal young Kern is described by Mr. Morrow as “a brilliant scholar but not a plodder.” He seemed to absorb the matter of the textbooks without effort. “In the study of English Grammar he particularly excelled,” writes Morrow. “He studied language not to get its dull formulas, but to know how most forcibly and clearly to express his thoughts.”

It was during his Normal days that Kern determined definitely upon the study of law.

While Doctor Kern would have defrayed the expenses of his son’s legal education, the latter was of an independent nature and preferred to pay his own way. With the view to making the money required for a course of legal instructions in a university, he took the examination for a teacher’s license before he was sixteen, and while the examination was conducted by Rawson Vaile, a graduate of Amherst College and a stickler for thoroughness, he made a very high grade and was granted a twenty-four months’ license, which was the highest permissible by the county examiner. Here enters the pedagogue.

III

The young teacher took charge of his first school at the age of fifteen, and taught two terms, but in different schools, as he never failed to observe in later years in an attempt to belittle his professional ability. His first experience as a teacher was in the home school at Alto, and in the winter of ’66-7 he taught in what is still popularly known as “the old Dyar school house,” about three miles east of Alto, in the country. The John Kern of this period is described by one of the students as “tall, straight, boyish in appearance, not particular in his personal appearance, usually having his trousers over a boot strap.” Those still living who knew the future senator as a country school teacher take issue with his own estimate of his success. His methods of instruction were those of an original thinker, and ignoring the hard and fast rules, he succeeded in creating an interest among the students with gratifying results. I am indebted to Albert B. Kirkpatrick, one of his students who was in later years to cross swords with him at the bar, for some interesting recollections which reflect light on the character of the youthful pedagogue:

“The school (Dyar) was large for a country school, about sixty,
some boys and girls larger than the teacher. On the playgrounds
Kern was one of the boys, and you would scarcely know from his
conduct that he was a teacher. One day he ordered a large boy to
stand upon the floor and on his refusal Kern told him he could do
that or take a whipping. After school he kept the stubborn rebel,
together with two other boys as witnesses, and proceeded to
administer the castigation which, according to report, was quite
severe. One day a dispute arose as to the ownership of a rabbit
some boy had caught. Kern acted as presiding judge and found that
the boy in possession of the rabbit was not the rightful owner,
and fixed as his punishment the restoration of the rabbit and the
infliction of lashes, which he proceeded to lay on.

“Kern was good in the common school branches, and he especially
delighted to read in McGuffey’s Sixth Reader from Patrick Henry and
other oratorical notables. He was fine in the school house debates
and generally covered about half the school house in his orations,
gesticulating wildly and speaking at the top of his voice.

“He was not methodical in his teaching, but original, and the
students seemed to learn rapidly. They liked him, as a rule,
although he did not then possess those remarkable social qualities
that characterized him in after years.”

The “school house debates” referred to were features of the Dyar school literary and debating society, which owed its existence to Kern’s initiative and bore the pretentious name of the Platonian. It was during the period when the country was torn over the problems of reconstruction, and these furnished the topics for the debates. The sixteen-year-old teacher invariably took part, and his chief competitor was usually Jesse Yager, described as “a solid, substantial citizen of the community and a man of great ability.” In these discussions Kern invariably took a positive stand in favor of a liberal policy toward the white people of the southern states who had returned to their allegiance, and the carpet bagger usually came in for an unmerciful scoring. One who often heard him in those days, Jackson Morrow, in recalling the earnestness and vigor of the boy orator, expresses the opinion that these speeches “would have reflected credit upon the best statesmen of the period.” Such views as were held and advocated by the young school teacher were bold indeed for the time and place. Passions still ran high, and Howard county was extreme in its republicanism of the Thad Stevens variety. Strangely enough, the boldness of the pedagogue in no wise detracted from his personal popularity and served to enhance his reputation. Many years afterward, when Kern, soon after his nomination for vice-president, returned to Kokomo to meet his old friends and neighbors in a great non-partisan reception, Jesse Yager, his polemic adversary of the Platonian days, then a very old man, occupied a place on the platform.

It was during the summer of 1866 that the pedagogue, a member of the “Alto Dramatic Society,” made his first and only appearance “on any stage” as an actor in “The Demons of the Glass.” Mr. Morrow gives an interesting description of the occasion.

“The entertainment,” he writes, “was held on a delightful summer evening in a grove not far from the village of Alto. The stage was built of rough lumber and lighted by kerosene lamps, but a full moon flooding the landscape with a mellow light, and the great spreading tops of centuries-old forest trees gave this primitive stage a beauty and dignity hard to surpass. The show was free and the people came en masse from far and near, and when the curtain rose on the entertainment a very large audience was waiting. Kern was easily the star of the evening. So realistic was his acting of the husband and father becoming a drunkard and bringing poverty and ruin on a happy home, that an unpleasant sadness stole over the audience and a strong temperance lesson was impressed upon the people present. As a boy John Kern was an enthusiastic ‘dry.’”

It was toward the close of his last term of teaching that he became an active member of the Methodist church, the occasion of his conversion being a revival meeting held at Albright’s chapel. For a time he became deeply religious, taking his church duties with a seriousness that attracted attention. This ostentatious spirit of worship soon passed.

During these teaching days, when the young pedagogue was preaching temperance, damning the radicalism of the Thad Stevens, protesting against carpetbag government in the southern states, practicing his embryo eloquence upon debating societies in the woods, and experiencing a spiritual awakening, he was attracting attention throughout the community

JOHN W. KERN

DR. JACOB H. KERN NANCY KERN

At the University of Michigan

KERN’S BIRTHPLACE AS IT APPEARED IN 1908 ]

and county as a youth of precocious ability and rare gifts. This did not affect his natural modesty or his relations with young people of his own age. The society of Alto and the neighborhood could scarcely be described as “fashionable,” but its members were genuine and its friendships real. Writing of his boyish characteristics, Mr. Morrow says: “His friendship was steady and faithful. I never knew him to cut a friend as the mood or occasion might suggest. He appeared to always meet his friend with a smile and a friendly handclasp that impressed one as real, and he manifested his interest in helpful ways. He had been trained to know the value of a dollar, taught that it represented real value and should not be squandered, but if he met a friend in need and he had a dollar in his pocket that dollar was his friend’s at once. He had large sympathies and in a sense he was his brother’s keeper. His general character never changed.”

During these pedagogue days he was giving careful attention to the selection of a college in which to prepare himself for the law, and his choice fell on the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, then the great school of the west, with Cooley at the head of the lecture corps. He had not accumulated so much that he did not have to carefully consider the expense without drawing liberally upon his father, and this he had determined not to do. The living expenses at Ann Arbor presented an attractive prospect as well as the faculty, and in September, 1867, he set out for the university determined to make the most of his opportunities.

IV

In the latter part of the sixties the university at Ann Arbor ranked easily as the first educational institution of the middle west. The faculty of the law department, with Thomas M. Cooley at the head, was in no wise inferior to that of Harvard and Yale. The student body was drawn from the entire Mississippi valley and beyond. The town of Ann Arbor at the time possessed the charm one likes to associate with a college town, with its pleasant homes, wide lawns, and fine old forest trees lining the streets. At the time of his matriculation young Kern, student of law, had not yet reached the age of eighteen, and here he was to spend two profitable years and receive his degree before reaching his twentieth birthday. During the two years he was compelled to economize in every possible way. In the telling of the story of his Ann Arbor days I am deeply indebted to Jackson Morrow, a boyhood friend, with whom he corresponded during the period and who has carefully preserved most of the letters written him by Kern from the university. These rather suggest a youth possessed of considerable assurance, and limited experience, inspired by much ambition, and prone to “act up” to the rôle of the embryo lawyer. In his first letter November 3, 1867, he describes his impressions of the university.

“I got here early on Saturday morning and proceeded at once to the
university, where I relieved myself of thirty-five dollars, and
received a paper which entitles the bearer to a full course of law
lectures in the University of Michigan. With a light heart and a
materially lightened pocketbook, I then sought a boarding house,
which we found at Mrs. Cramptons, in the east part of the city,
where we now are paying $4.12½ per week, or, as the people here
would term it, four dollars with a shillin’. We have a good
boarding house, good rooms, good fires, good appetites, etc.

“Well, the Monday following I wended my way to the Law building,
where I listened to my first lecture by Hon. Thomas M. Cooley.
Since then I have attended two each day, sometimes delivered by
Cooley, and sometimes by one of the other professors of
law--Campbell, Walker and Pond. The number of students here this
winter is hardly so great as last, owing, no doubt, to the hard
times, as the number of students in all the colleges of the country
has materially decreased since last year. Their general library
here, which is free to all, contains over 30,000 volumes and is the
best place for reading I was ever in.

“I received a letter from Sturgis the other day. He is, as usual,
in all his glory. A short time ago he wrote me giving his views
politically, and, as they did not just suit me, I sat down and gave
the gentleman the benefit of sixteen pages of foolscap containing
some sound old Democratic doctrine which I guess he profited by, as
he has held his peace ever since.”

It will be noted that the Kern, the law student in his teens, was quite as partisan as in his earlier boyhood, and nothing in these letters to Morrow is more interesting than the sidelights they throw upon his political views.

In his next letter, written three weeks later, he describes the method of instruction in the law department, and gives his correspondent, who had succeeded him as teacher in the Dyar school, some sound advice as to handling the obstreperous “scholars.”

“I was glad to learn that you had become teacher in Dist. No. 8,
Taylor township, and wish you the greatest success in your
undertaking. I think before spring you will appreciate some of my
last winter’s trials. The scholars, however, are generally well
disposed and are not naturally vicious. My advice is not to spare
the rod, but crack the whip under their bellies whenever they
deserve it.... I sympathize deeply with every school teacher,
knowing as I do the responsibility resting upon them. I think I
have done my last teaching unless I ignobly fail in the study of
law. I am well pleased with the study so far--as the mode of
instruction here makes very pleasant what would otherwise appear
intricate and difficult. We here not only get a theoretical but a
practical knowledge of the law, for we have club courts, so that
every student may have ample opportunity of displaying his legal
knowledge. I have been an attorney in four cases and have another
in the Indiana Club court next Saturday. Prof. Moses Coit Tyler,
professor of rhetoric and elocution in the literary department,
lectures to us twice a week on elocution. This is a great advantage
to us.... Our little winter that we had some days ago has vanished
and we are now having a delightful Indian summer--warm and smoky.
From all appearances the climate here is not so disagreeable as
that of Indiana in the winter season....”

Two weeks later he had changed his opinion of the charms of a Michigan winter and was suffering with a cold, which did not prevent him, however, from giving Morrow the advantage of his eighteen years’ experience in the world on the proper method of maintaining discipline in a country school. His reference to the girls about Alto and Kokomo indicates that he was not entirely immune to the charms of the sex.

“The present juncture finds me very unwell, suffering from a
miserably bad cold and a very severe sore throat.... We now are
enjoying (?) the stern realities of a northern winter--chief among
which are overcoats, overshoes, comforters, cold feet, frosted
ears, etc. The ground is covered with snow to the depth of two or
three inches and skating is the chief amusement. They have a
skating park here, and it is thronged every evening.

“I was glad to hear that you and the school were progressing
finely--I would advise you to show a bold front--use the hickory
and beech when needed, and you will succeed, for the students
generally are well disposed.

“You have my very best wishes in the reorganization of the
Platonian. I would like to be with you a while and excrete a ‘few
gas.’ You may tell Mr. Madison Jackson that my days of sleigh
riding are over for the present, but were I in Indiana I should
very much enjoy such a tear as we had that night. You may also tell
Em--that ‘sparking’ is old and has played out, especially sparking
in the rain. When I get home I may do some little of it and she had
better look out....”

In his next letter dated after the first of the year 1868 he refers to his holiday dissipation at Detroit and at Windsor in Canada, and the reader will probably smile at the nineteen-year-old globe trotter’s careful explanation of the location and character of Detroit:

“We have had on the whole a very pleasant vacation--though rather
dull at times--and our lectures commence again to-morrow, and I’m
very glad of it. We have a good sleighing snow now, and as I write
I hear the sleigh bells jingling as merrily as can be. I don’t
indulge in the luxury of sleighing this winter, as it is really a
dear luxury--only $1.50 per hour.

“Well, on the 31st of December, the last day of the old year, I got
aboard the 8 A. M. train east and went down to the metropolis of
Michigan, i. e., Detroit, which is pleasantly situated thirty-eight
miles east of here on the Detroit river. It is a city of about one
hundred thousand inhabitants--and is improving very rapidly....
After we had explored Detroit very thoroughly we went across the
river into Queen Vic’s dominions and landed in a town of about two
or three thousand inhabitants called Windsor--noted as being the
stopping place of C. L. Vallandigham. Canada is a stinking
place--two-thirds of the people in Windsor are Americans of African
descent, while the rest are full-blooded Britishers who in point of
cleanliness are in no way superior to the “cullid” folks. I got
enough of Canada in a short time and recrossed into Uncle Sam’s
domain, took the 4 o’clock train for Ann Arbor, where I arrived at
6, being satisfied to remain there till the 28th March, when I will
make my exit for Alto, the city on the hill....”

The next of the Morrow letters, written in January, 1868, is especially interesting, in that it discloses the budding politician and slate maker engaged in the determination of the personnel of the national Democratic ticket for the campaign of that year. In the upper left-hand corner of the envelope he had neatly printed his ticket:

FOR PRESIDENT
GEO. H. PENDLETON
FOR VICE PRES.
CHAS. O’CONNOR
OF N. Y.

In this letter he grows enthusiastic over the action of the Indiana Democracy in nominating Thomas A. Hendricks for governor.

“Since receiving your letter I had a little sick spell, had a
doctor to see me, who very kindly cured me and relieved me of six
shillin’s. We are now having splendid winter weather--just snow
enough to make good sleighing and just cool enough to make one
cooly comfortable without an overcoat. Time is flying by very--very
rapidly. The four and a half months that I have remained here have
glided by so rapidly and so merrily that I can but look back upon
them with surprise and wish that they were here again. I have only
about nine weeks to stay here, when I shall take my departure for
Alto to realize the comforts of sweet, sweet home.... I see that
the Democracy of Indiana have nominated a strong ticket with
Hendricks as standard bearer. I think in the present or coming
campaign we can vanquish the Radicals, defeat their candidate for
governor, place T. A. Hendricks in the gubernatorial chair, send
Dan Voorhees to the senate and Judge Lindsay to congress--restore
the constitution and laws to their proper place, elect George H.
Pendleton president of the United States, and then throw out the
sails and the old ship of state will move on more smoothly than it
has done since the Democratic party surrendered the country to the
Radicals to be worked over.”

Less than three weeks later, February 12, 1868, the young slate maker had found it well to remove Chas. O’Connor from the national ticket as a candidate for the vice-presidency and on the envelope of his next letter we find with Pendleton the name of John P. Stockton of New Jersey. We are left in doubt as to how O’Connor had lost the support of the embryo politician or the reasons for the new partiality for Stockton. In this letter we get an inkling of some of the advantages Ann Arbor offered to a young man of Kern’s ambitions and tastes. It was about this time that he had the opportunity of hearing Gough’s lecture on oratory, of listening to Wendell Phillips lecture on “The Lost Arts” and of hearing E. P. Whipple. In this letter, too, we have the sole reference to Kern’s participation in the work of the debating societies. It is not surprising to find that this uncompromising Democrat should have joined the “Douglas Society.”

“We are now having splendid weather--good sleighing, fine skating,
nice walking--in fact, everything that nature has anything to do
with is conducive to a fellow’s happiness.

“On Monday night John B. Gough lectured here on ‘Eloquence and
Oratory.’ He is a splendid lecturer and his lecture, which was two
hours and a quarter in length, was a success--all except the last
quarter of an hour, when he exhorted the young men of the
university to use all their eloquence in procuring for the
down-trodden African the election franchise. The applause from the
Rads was vociferous, while from my corner came a little puny hiss.
E. P. Whipple lectures here next Tuesday night, and on Saturday
night Wendell Phillips speaks on ‘The Lost Arts.’

“We have some good literary societies in connection with the Law
Department. I belong to the ‘Douglas.’ On last Saturday night we
discussed the question, ‘Resolved that the reconstruction policy of
congress is unwise and inexpedient.’”

In the debate on the reconstruction policy of congress young Kern led the debate in opposition to the policy. His attitude toward negro suffrage at this time was the position of his party, but the opposition was not wholly confined to Democrats. It was a time when party feeling ran high. Political discussions were bitter and frequently were followed by blows. Kern in his teens was a radical Democrat and never mentioned the Republicans as anything other than Radicals. In later life he was friendly to the colored race, but fifty years before he had been an extremist in his position on the proper political status of the negro. His radicalism was not moderated by the tone of the Republican press and speakers of the time. Many years later in speaking in the senate he referred to the time he had heard Zack Chandler, the great Republican leader of Michigan, making a political address in Ann Arbor, make the statement:

“Democrats talk a good deal about their rights, I recognize the
fact that they have rights which they are entitled to enjoy, at
least two rights--one a constitutional and the other a divine
right--a constitutional right to be hung and a divine right to be
damned.”

It is not remarkable that with men of age and experience indulging in language of this character that a nineteen-year-old partisan should have found it provocative of retaliation.

In his last letter from Ann Arbor, January 1, 1869, we find him preparing his thesis on “The Dissolution of Agency,” studying hard for his examinations, seriously considering a location for the display of his professional prowess, and instructing his friend Morrow as to the most direct route to Ann Arbor and warning him against the “abominable thieves” at Grand Trunk Junction--leaving one with the impression that he may have had an unpleasant encounter with the tribe.

“Your letter was received a few days ago and on this, the first day
of the New Year, I seat myself to answer it. Eighteen hundred and
sixty-nine was ushered in by a snowstorm, which had the effect of
keeping the people off the streets and giving them quite a desolate
appearance. I have been very busy ever since I left Indiana and am
at present putting in all my time writing a thesis on ‘The
Dissolution of Agency,’ which calls into requisition all my legal
knowledge....

“We senior law students don’t have quite so fine a time as we did
last winter. Then all we had to do was to sit and listen to
lectures, but now we are quizzed each morning on the lectures of
the preceding day, and after holidays we will be examined every
afternoon on last winter’s lectures, to wind up with an examination
of five days at the close of the term. Rather a gloomy prospect,
isn’t it?

“I have no particular fears but that I shall get through all right
and come out a veritable LL. B. I have thought considerably in
regard to my future operations and have concluded to go into
business at Tipton, Indiana, for a while at least. It’s rather a
hard town, but as it is young and growing there are hopes for it. I
had intended to locate in Iowa until after the November elections.
That 30,000 majority in favor of negro suffrage staggered me.

“In coming out here you had better start on the afternoon train
from Kokomo, come to Peru, and then to Toledo, buy a ticket for
Grand Trunk Junction, which is three miles from Detroit. There you
will connect with the Michigan Central Road, and will probably be
at Ann Arbor on the 7 P. M. train. Write me the day you start and
the train you start on and I’ll be at the depot. At Grand Trunk
Junction keep a lookout for your watch and pocketbook, for there
are a set of abominable thieves there.

“Ann Arbor is all right, as is the university. Affairs are rather
dull just now owing to the fact that a large proportion of the
students have gone home to spend the holidays. Two of our law
students, in order to pass away the time the other day, engaged in
the luxury of a fight. The result was that one of them was badly
threshed. As they were both Democrats it was a rather unfortunate
affair....”

Fortunately for the biographer, when Kern received his degree and returned to Howard county, his friend Morrow left Howard for Ann Arbor and the correspondence was continued for a time. In a letter dated April 4th, 1869, he gives a “short sketch of his meanderings” after leaving Ann Arbor, returning by way of Toledo and Peru, and finding “Howard county literally capped with mud.” “Nobody,” he adds, “pretends to travel with a wagon--such would be impossible. I never saw such a stretch of muddy country in all my eventful career.” But “notwithstanding the mud,” he found things “rather lively,” with many of the young women of the neighborhood calling to inspect the new attorney in their midst. “I have as yet made no definite arrangements as to practicing,” he writes. “I am thinking of going in with Milton Bell or Clark N. Pollard”--this probably being written in a spirit of fun, as the two men mentioned were prominent members of the bar. In the next sentences he adds--“If I don’t go in with them I will go into a firm with John Worth Kern, LL. B.” He was not in the best of health at the time of his graduation, and he writes Morrow: “My health is no better than when I left. My cough doesn’t get much better. I have taken a whole bottle of medicine since I have been here.”

Hardly had he reached his home when his neighbors arranged for a speech from the neighborhood prodigy, and the young lawyer, having prepared it with a care becoming the importance of the occasion, went out into the woods near by, where he was practicing it with much vigor of gesticulation and expenditure of lung power when a neighborhood girl, passing the outskirts of the wood on her way to the house “with the two front doors,” saw him without recognizing either the man or the occasion. Rushing breathessly into the Kern home, she explained that she had encountered “a crazy man” in the woods making all sorts of unearthly noises.

“Oh, he’s not crazy,” said Sally Kern smiling, “that’s only John practicing his speech.”

A little later the shingle of “John W. Kern--Attorney at Law” was hung at Kokomo.