As a small testimony of my respect and obligation to your excellent Parents and of my love to you I send you with this six (6) English Guineas. They are pretty playthings, and in the country I came from many people are fond of them. Your Papa will let you look at them, and then he will take care of them, and by the time you are grown up to be a Man, they will, under Papa's wise management increase to twice their present number. With wishing you may never be in want of such playthings and yet never too fond of them, I remain your affectionate friend
Wm. M. Wells.
July 2, 1793."
When he was four years old Finley was sent to a school for very little children, kept by "Old Ma'am Rand". She was lame and could not walk across the room, but she kept a rattan rod by her side long enough to reach any naughty pupil in the room, and the children were much afraid of having this happen.
One day the teacher discovered Finley at the back of the room, busy "drawing" a picture of her with a sharp brass pin on the shiny wooden lid of a chest.
"Bring it to me!" commanded the old lady, and the boy came slowly forward, pin in hand. When he was near enough to reach, Old Ma'am Rand gripped him firmly and pinned him to her dress with the big pin. He struggled so hard that he got away and ran screaming to the end of the room with a piece of the old lady's dress that had been torn in the struggle, hanging on his sleeve.
But evidently he and his teacher were really good friends, for he stayed in her class until he was seven years old. Then he went to a preparatory school in Andover, Mass., and from there to Phillips Academy, also in Andover, where he was prepared for Yale college.
The following is the only letter preserved that was written by him at that early date, from the preparatory school.
"Dear Papa,—I hope you are well and I will thank you if you will send me up some quils. Give my love to mama and Nancy and my little brothers; pleas to kis them for me and send me up some very good paper to write to you.
I have as many blackberries as I want I go and pick them myself.