By Land and By Air 
     
    
   
   
    
     studied Algebra, but I never saw her stuck in working out 
     
     a sum. 1 figure that started my love for solving problems, 
     
     especially in mathematics and later in navigation and 
     
     medicine. 
     
    

    
     When I was in my early teens, I could work for 
     
     hours on a difficult math problem. When I started Grade 
     
     X in Little Sands school, I got a chance to start working in 
     
     the Murray River bank, all for $50.00 a year. When I had 
     
     persuaded my mother that this was a good idea, my two 
     
     sisters arrived from Boston for their summer vacation, and 
     
     convinced her that I should go to school to get my Grade 
     
     X. I can still remember my disgust as I trailed off to Little 
     
     Sands school that first day in Grade X. 
     
    

    
     Within a year my mother was dying following 
     
     her twelfth childbirth, at age 42 years, and just before she 
     
     died she requested the nurse that she would take me to 
     
     her home in Lyndale, where they had a teacher that had 
     
     gone to Prince of Wales College three years, and had a 
     
     first class license. Little Sands had a third class teacher, 
     
     who had no idea of Grade X work, especially in French, 
     
     Latin, Algebra and Geometry. My mother used to help me 
     
     that half year before she died, by asking me the English 
     
     words and I would spell them in Latin and French. This 
     
     was a great help, which I used in later years, to review my 
     
     vocabulary every week, which ended up that in Prince of 
     
     Wales College I always made better marks in French and 
     
     Latin than in English. As I look back I should have been 
     
     like Churchill, and put more time on English than I did. 
     
    

    
     My mother was a very hard working woman, and 
     
     I could hear that spinning wheel going long after I went 
     
     to bed. She not only worked in the house, but helped with 
     
     the farm work, like throwing sheaves of grain up, so that 
     
     I could make a load to carry to the barn. She would be 
     
     picking potatoes and have to rush home to make meals. 
     
    
   
   
    
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