In the morning I went back to Ypsilanti, and with the aid of the
professors of the institution I got a good boarding place. I attended
this institution almost two years and a half, when I could not hold out
any longer, as my allowance for support from the Government was so
scanty it did not pay for all my necessary expenses. I have always
attributed this small allowance to the Indian Agent who was so much
against me. I tried to board myself and to live on bread and water; and
therefore hired a room which cost me 75 cents a week, and bought bread
from the bakeries, which cost me about 50 cents a week, and once in a
while I had fire-wood as I did not keep much fire. I stood it pretty
well for three months, but I could not stand it any longer. I was very
much reduced in flesh, and on the least exertion I would be trembling,
and I began to be discouraged in the prosecution of my studies. By this
time I was in the D class, but class F was the graduating class in that
institution, which I was exceedingly anxious to attain; but I imagined
that I was beginning to be sick on account of so much privation, or
that I would starve to death before I could be graduated, and therefore
I was forced to abandon my studies and leave the institution.

As I did not have any money to pay my passage homeward, I wept about
working and occasionally lecturing on the subject of the Indians of
Michigan, and at last I had enough means to return home and try to live
once more according to the means and strength of my education.
September 4th, 1858, I was joined in wedlock to the young lady who is
still my beloved wife, and now we have four active children for whom I
ever feel much anxiety that they might be educated and brought up in a
Christian manner. Soon after I came to my country my father died at a
great age. The first year we lived in Little Traverse we struggled
quite hard to get along, but in another year I was appointed U. S.
Interpreter by the Hon. D. C. Leach, U. S. Indian Agent for Mackinac