Excerpt from Biographies of Members of the House of Representatives of the Forty-Third Congress James was permitted to attend the district school a few months of each year, and at intervals aided in supporting the family by working at the carpenter's trade. This not proving very remunerative, in his seventeenth year he secured employment as driver on the tow-path oi the Ohio Canal, and soon rose to be a boatman. The dream of his ambition was to become a Sailor on the lakes. The hardship and exposure incident to his life on the Canal brought on the fever and ague in the fall of 1848. When the young boatman had recovered from a three months' illness, it was too late to carry out his purpose of shipping on the lakes. He was persuaded to defer this step until the following fall, and meanwhile to spend a few months in attending a high-school in an adjoining county. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.