Young Mayne Reid early evinced a taste for war. When a small boy he was often found running barefooted along the road after a drum and fife band, greatly to his mother’s dismay. She chided him, saying, “What will the folks think to see Mr Reid’s son going about like this?” To which young Mayne replied, “I don’t care. I’d rather be Mr Drum than Mr Reid.”
It was the ardent wish of both parents that their eldest son should enter the Church; and, at the age of sixteen, Mayne Reid was sent to college to prepare for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, but after four years’ study, it was found that his inclinations were altogether opposed to this calling. He carried off prizes in mathematics, classics, and elocution; distinguished himself in all athletic sports; anything but theology. It is recorded, on one occasion when called upon to make a prayer, he utterly failed, breaking down at the first few sentences. It was called by his fellow-students “Reid’s wee prayer.”
Captain Mayne Reid has been heard to say, “My mother would rather have had me settle down as a minister, on a stipend of one hundred a year, than know me to be the most famous man in history.”
The good mother could never understand her eldest son’s ambition; but she was happy in seeing her second son, John, succeed his father as pastor of Closkilt, Drumgooland.
In the month of January, 1810, Mayne Reid first set foot in the new world—landing at New Orleans. We quote his own words: “Like other striplings escaped from college, I was no longer happy at home. The yearning for travel was upon me, and without a sigh I beheld the hills of my native land sink behind the black waves, not much caring whether I should ever see them again.”
Soon after landing, he thus expressed himself, showing how little store he set upon his classical training as a stock-in-trade upon which to begin the battle of life: “And one of my earliest surprises—one that met me on the very threshold of my Transatlantic existence—was the discovery of my own utter uselessness. I could point to my desk and say, ‘There lie the proofs of my erudition; the highest prizes of my college class.’ But of what use are they? The dry theories I had been taught had no application to the purposes of real life. My logic was the prattle of the parrot. My classic lore lay upon my mind like lumber; and I was altogether about as well prepared to struggle with life—to benefit either my fellow-men or myself—as if I had graduated in Chinese mnemonics. And, oh! ye pale professors, who drilled me in syntax and scansion, ye would deem me ungrateful indeed were I to give utterance to the contempt and indignation which I then felt for ye; then, when I looked back upon ten years of wasted existence spent under your tutelage; then, when, after believing myself an educated man, the illusion vanished, and I awoke to the knowledge that I knew nothing.”
We shall not here follow Mayne Reid through the ever varying scenes of this period—his life in Louisiana, encounters on the prairies with buffaloes, grizzly bears, and Indians on the war-path with their trophies of scalps; his excursions with trappers and Indians up the Red River, the Missouri, and Platte—for all of these are embodied in his writings, which contain more reality than romance.
Mayne Reid tried his hand at various occupations, both in the civilised and uncivilised life of the new world.
For a brief space he was “storekeeper” and “nigger driver,” then tutor in the family of Judge Peyton Robertson, of Tennessee. Soon tiring of this, he set up a school of his own in the neighbourhood, erecting a wooden building as school house, at his own expense. He was very popular as a teacher, but hunting in the backwoods being more to his taste, he soon went in quest of fresh sport.