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P2

1887 I was 5 in Bennington VT.  
Drawing horses & other animals from memory of circuses & combinations of same.  Learned to milk. Trying to sing & whistle & compose songs.


1892 10ys Harness horse, groom, stable, feed, bed &c. (In Yonkers) still playing horse, ox & cow & taking up going on hands & feet a great deal. Drawing.  Also making hay of garden lawn-grass, mowed with fingers, & putting in Toy barn made of boot box with first wooden horse “Grace Horse” made me in Lyme, Conn. as “colt of the “Team” of saw horses, by my father.
Also set to gather duck-eggs, & to turn damper in hall stove, use jack knife, hammer, saw, rake, trowel, round up chickens roosting in trees in fall take care of own flower gardens
& pot for winter.  Learning German from reader. Keeping list of chickens & kittens. Could whistle. Learn and sing hymns & songs, chop wood, sift ashes, get coal. Committed Lady of Lake to memory. composing songs and reciting. Instituing turns with brothers.

1897 15 ys. Last child (Margaret) born. (modeled managery [[menagerie]] in snow) Had fallen in love ([[?]] only) with young bass who sang in choir (of Presbyterian church, which we attended but did not join) in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. & let my hair grow. Was already teaching Alfred & Van Cleve algebra & geometry - The last my great interest - & some German & grammar. In summer conducted them on long walks through center Westchester Co. No paved roads, but some "safty" bicycling beginning on "side paths". Drawing. Had read "The Island Home". Some of Dickens & Geo Elliot, but very slow with prose. Vocabulary oral. Never can spell English. considered college my birthright, but not encouraged to go. Had no doubt I wanted to be a field zoologist, also learn languages. Ride to hounds. Breed horses, go to sea. Compose & memorize mine and others' poems. Skate, swim, climb trees, mountains, organize us as "Johnson Clan" democratically.

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Wooley's "International Law"
Mottley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic".
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