Three years after moving to the new home, when Elias was eleven years of age, his mother was removed by death. The father, thus left with six children, two younger than Elias, finally found it necessary to divide the family. Two years after the death of his mother he went to reside with one of his elder brothers who was married, and lived some distance from his father's. It is probable that this brother's house was his home most of the time until he was seventeen. Much regret is expressed by him that he was thus removed from parental restraint.
The Journal makes possibly unnecessarily sad confession of what he considered waywardness during this period. He says that he wandered far from "the salutary path of true religion, learning to sing vain songs, and to take delight in running horses."[5] Just what the songs were, and the exact character of the horse racing must be mainly a matter of conjecture. Manifestly "running horses" did not mean at all the type of racetrack gambling with which twentieth-century Long Island is familiar.
[5] Journal of Elias Hicks, p. 8.
In the midst of self-accusation, he declares that he did not "give way to anything which was commonly accounted disreputable, having always a regard to strict honesty, and to such a line of conduct as comported with politeness and good breeding."[6] One can scarcely think of Elias Hicks as a juvenile Chesterfield. From the most unfavorable things he says about himself, the conclusion is easily reached that he was really a serious-minded youth, and what has always been considered a "good boy." It must be remembered, however, that he set for himself a high standard, which was often violated, as he became what he called "hardened in vanity." Speaking of his youthful sports, and possible waywardness, his maturer judgment confessed, that but "for the providential care of my Heavenly Father, my life would have fallen a sacrifice to my folly and indiscretion."[7]
[6] Journal, p. 8.
[7] Journal of Elias Hicks, p. 9.
There is practically no reference to the matter of schools or schooling in the Journal. There is every reason for the belief that he was self-educated. He may have had a brief experience at schools of a rather primary character. At all events he must have had a considerable acquaintance with mathematics, and evidently he at an early age contracted the reading habit. Books were few, and of periodical literature there was none. Friendly literature itself was confined to Sewell's History, probably Ellwood's edition of George Fox's Journal, while he may have had access to some of the controversial pamphlets of the seventeenth century period. The Journals of various "ancient" Friends were to be had, but how rich the mine of this literature which he explored we shall never know. Evidently from his youth he was a careful and intelligent reader of the Bible, and regarding its passages, its ethics and its theology, he became his own interpreter.