At the close of the American Revolutionary War, he, with many others of the same class, went to New Brunswick, where he married my Mother, whose maiden name was Stickney, a descendant of one of the early Massachusetts Puritan settlers.
Near the close of the last century my Father, with his family, followed an elder brother to Canada,[1] where he drew some 2,500 acres of land from the Government, for his services in the army, besides his pension. My Father settled on 600 acres of land lying about half-way between the present Village of Vittoria and Port Ryerse, where my uncle Samuel settled, and where he built the first mill in the County of Norfolk.
On the organization of the London District in 1800, for legal purposes, my uncle was the Lieutenant of the County, issuing commissions in his own name to militia officers; he was also Chairman of the Quarter Sessions. My Father was appointed High Sheriff in 1800, but held the office only six years, when he resigned it in behalf of the late Colonel John Bostwick (then a surveyor), who subsequently married my eldest sister, and who owned what is now Port Stanley, and was at one time a Member of Parliament for the County of Middlesex.
My Father devoted himself exclusively to agriculture, and I learned to do all kinds of farm-work. The district grammar-school was then kept within half-a-mile of my Father's residence, by Mr. James Mitchell (afterwards Judge Mitchell), an excellent classical scholar; he came from Scotland with the late Rt. Rev. Dr. Strachan, first Bishop of Toronto. Mr. Mitchell married my youngest sister. He treated me with much kindness. When I recited to him my lessons in English grammar he often said that he had never studied the English grammar himself, that he wrote and spoke English by the Latin grammar. At the age of fourteen I had the opportunity of attending a course of instruction in the English language given by two professors, the one an Englishman, and the other an American, who taught nothing but English grammar. They professed in one course of instruction, by lectures, to enable a diligent pupil to parse any sentence in the English language. I was sent to attend these lectures, the only boarding abroad for school instruction I ever enjoyed. My previous knowledge of the letter of the grammar was of great service to me, and gave me an advantage over other pupils, so that before the end of the course I was generally called up to give visitors an illustration of the success of the system, which was certainly the most effective I have ever since witnessed, having charts, etc., to illustrate the agreement and government of words.
This whole course of instruction by two able men, who did nothing but teach grammar from one week's end to another had to me all the attraction of a charm and a new discovery. It gratified both curiosity and ambition, and I pursued it with absorbing interest, until I had gone through Murray's two volumes of "Expositions and Exercises," Lord Kames' "Elements of Criticism," and Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric," of which I still have the notes which I then made. The same professors obtained sufficient encouragement to give a second course of instruction and lectures at Vittoria, and one of them becoming ill, the other solicited my Father to allow me to assist him, as it would be useful to me, while it would enable him to fulfil his engagements. Thus, before I was sixteen, I was inducted as a teacher, by lecturing on my native language. This course of instruction, and exercises in English, have proved of the greatest advantage to me, not less in enabling me to study foreign languages than in using my own.
But that to which I am principally indebted for any studious habits, mental energy, or even capacity or decision of character, is religious instruction, poured into my mind in my childhood by a Mother's counsels, and infused into my heart by a Mother's prayers and tears. When very small, under six years of age, having done something naughty, my Mother took me into her bedroom, told me how bad and wicked what I had done was, and what pain it caused her, kneeled down, clasped me to her bosom, and prayed for me. Her tears, falling upon my head, seemed to penetrate to my very heart. This was my first religious impression, and was never effaced. Though thoughtless, and full of playful mischief, I never afterwards knowingly grieved my Mother, or gave her other than respectful and kind words.
At the close of the American War, in 1815, when I was twelve years of age, my three elder brothers, George, William, and John, became deeply religious, and I imbibed the same spirit. My consciousness of guilt and sinfulness was humbling, oppressive, and distressing; and my experience of relief, after lengthened fastings, watchings, and prayers, was clear, refreshing, and joyous. In the end I simply trusted in Christ, and looked to Him for a present salvation; and, as I looked up in my bed, the light appeared to my mind, and, as I thought, to my bodily eye also, in the form of One, white-robed, who approached the bedside with a smile, and with more of the expression of the countenance of Titian's Christ than of any person whom I have ever seen. I turned, rose to my knees, bowed my head, and covered my face, rejoiced with trembling, saying to a brother who was lying beside me, that the Saviour was now near us. The change within was more marked than anything without and, perhaps, the inward change may have suggested what appeared an outward manifestation. I henceforth had new views, new feelings, new joys, and new strength. I truly delighted in the law of the Lord, after the inward man, and—
"Jesus, all the day long, was my joy and my song."
From that time I became a diligent student, and new quickness and strength seemed to be imparted to my understanding and memory. While working on the farm I did more than ordinary day's work, that it might show how industrious, instead of lazy, as some said, religion made a person. I studied between three and six o'clock in the morning, carried a book in my pocket during the day to improve odd moments by reading or learning, and then reviewed my studies of the day aloud while walking out in the evening.
To the Methodist way of religion my Father was, at that time, extremely opposed, and refused me every facility for acquiring knowledge while I continued to go amongst them. I did not, however, formally join them, in order to avoid his extreme displeasure. A kind friend offered to give me any book that I would commit to memory, and submit to his examination of the same. In this way I obtained my first Latin grammar, "Watts on the Mind," and "Watts' Logic."