“The want of pocket-money prevented me from joining my young companions in any of those little expensive frolics which often lead to future dissipation, and thus became a blessing; and my good master Tisdale had the wisdom so to vary my studies as to render them rather a pleasure than a task. Thus I went forward, without interruption, and at the age of twelve might have been admitted to enter college; for I had then read Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Juvenal in Latin; the Greek Testament and Homer’s Iliad in Greek, and was thoroughly versed in geography, ancient and modern, in studying which I had the advantage (then rare) of a twenty-inch globe. I had also read with care Rollin’s History of Ancient Nations; also his History of the Roman Republic; Mr. Crevier’s continuation of the History of the Emperors, and Rollin’s Arts and Sciences of the Ancient Nations. In arithmetic alone I met an awful stumbling-block. I became puzzled by a sum in division, where the divisor consisted of three figures. I could not comprehend the rule for ascertaining how many times it was contained in the dividend; my mind seemed to come to a dead stand; my master would not assist me, and forbade the boys to do it, so that I well recollect the question stood on my slate unsolved nearly three months, to my extreme mortification.
“At length the solution seemed to flash upon my mind at once, and I went forward without further let or hindrance through the ordinary course of fractions, vulgar and decimal, surveying, trigonometry, geometry, navigation, etc., so that when I had reached the age of fifteen and a half years, it was stated by my good master that he could teach me little more, and that I was fully qualified to enter Harvard College in the middle of the third or junior year. This was approved by my father, and proposed to me. In the meantime my fondness for painting had grown with my growth, and in reading of the arts of antiquity I had become familiar with the names of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Zeuxis and Apelles.”
This son, who began his great career as an historical painter by drawing pictures in sand on the floor, after the manner we have shown, as he grew older and had seen Europe, determined to follow his genius. The young man gives us the following view of his father, a lovely picture in itself:
“My father urged me to study the law as the profession which in a republic leads to all emolument and distinction, and for which my early education had well prepared me. My reply was that, so far as I understood the question, law was rendered necessary by the vices of mankind; that I had already seen too much of them willingly to devote my life to a profession which would keep me perpetually involved either in the defense of innocence against fraud and injustice, or (what was much more revolting to an ingenuous mind) to the protection of guilt against just and merited punishment. In short, I pined for the arts, again entered into an elaborate defense of my predilection, and again dwelt upon the honors paid to artists in the glorious days of Greece and Athens. My father listened patiently, and when I had finished he complimented me upon the able manner in which I had defended what to him still appeared to be a bad cause.
“‘I had confirmed his opinion,’ he said, ‘that with proper study I should make a respectable lawyer; but,’ added he, ‘you must give me leave to say that you appear to have overlooked, or forgotten, one very important point in your case.’ ‘Pray, sir,’ I rejoined, ‘what was that?’ ‘You appear to forget, sir, that Connecticut is not Athens’; and with this pithy remark he bowed and withdrew, and never more opened his lips upon the subject. How often have those few impressive words occurred to my memory—‘Connecticut is not Athens!’ The decision was made in favor of the arts. I closed all other business, and in December, 1783, embarked at Portsmouth, N. H., for London.”
He could begin to make Connecticut like Athens by his own work.
Queer tales they told “grave people” at the ordinaries, and inns, and at the store of the war office.
The New England mind in the colonial period saw no chariots of angels in the air, and heard no rustlings of angels’ wings, like the ancient Hebrews, and looked for no goddesses, like the Greeks and Romans. Ugly hags and witches, “grave people” in winding-sheets, scared folks in a cowardly manner in lonely highways and hidden byways; bad people who died with restless consciences came forth from their “earthly beds” to make startling confessions to the living. It was a time of terror, of people fleeing from persecutions, and of Indian hostilities. Let us have another old-time store story, to picture the social life of those decisive times.
It was the beginning of the days of the “drovers,” when our tale was told, such drovers as used to go wandering over New England in the fall and spring, selling cattle, or trading in cattle, with the farmers by the way.
It was fall. Maples flamed; the grape-leaves turned yellow around the purple clusters that hung over the walls; the fringed gentians lined the brooks; the cranberries reddened; the birds gathered in flocks; the blue jays trumpeted, and the crows cawed. Great stacks of corn filled the corners of the husking-fields.