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BATTLE CREEK BY A. D. P. VAN BUREN
He had studied here and there in this formidable volume, and had the answers to some of its difficult questions at his tongue's end. Meeting him at a "logging bee" one day, he laid siege to me as usual. He first attacked me in arithmetic, and following up his sharp questions, he pushed me out of that study into algebra, where my little barge ran against a snag. This he chuckled over. Crowding me on further, he urged me into surveying, where my slender craft had never ventured; and where he upset it in deep water. This was huge gratification to him. Although I had informed him that arithmetic and a smattering of algebra then comprised my knowledge of mathematics, still he very coolly
remarked: "Oh, I thought you knew something about mathematics, but I see you don't. " For a long time after that, whenever I saw old Kewney approaching me mathematically, like Martin Scott's coon, I cried out: "Hold on, neighbor Kewney, don't shoot, I'll come down. "
He had much of the cynic in him, and when giving his views of men and their measures, he did ample justice to the cynic, but not always to the men and the measures. But despite all his eccentricities, he had a kind heart as a man and a neighbor. What settler ever came to old Kewney's cabin and asked for anything he had and could lend, who was not accommodated ? Not one. In those days when the "Michigan appetite" set in, and people could not get enough to eat, nor eat enough to satisfy them, if they could get it, in such times of adversity true kindness and neighborly traits were found out— they were ever found in old Kewney's log cabin.
Michigan
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