Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life

by Lydia Maria Child

One day he met several of the Society of Friends, whom he had not seen for some time. Among them was an Orthodox Friend, who was rather stiff in his manners. The others shook hands with Isaac; but when he approached "the Orthodox," he merely held out his finger.

"Why dost thou offer me thy finger?" said he.

"I don't allow people of certain principles to get very deep hold of me," was the cold reply.

"Thou needest have no uneasiness on that score," rejoined Friend Hopper; "for there never was anything deep in thee to get hold of."

The sense of justice, so conspicuous in boyhood, always remained a distinguishing trait in his character. Once, after riding half a mile, he perceived that he had got into the wrong omnibus. When he jumped out, the driver called for pay; but he answered, "I don't owe thee anything. I've been carried the wrong way." This troubled him afterward, when he considered that he had used the carriage and horses, and that the mistake was his own fault. He kept on the look-out for the driver, but did not happen to see him again, until several weeks afterward. He called to him to stop, and paid the sixpence.

"Why, you refused to pay me, when I asked you," said the driver.

"I know I did," he replied; "but I repented of it afterward. I was in a hurry then, and I did not reflect that the mistake was my fault, not thine; and that I ought to pay for riding half a mile with thy horses, though they did carry me the wrong way." The man laughed, and said he didn't often meet with such conscientious passengers.

The tenacity of the old gentleman's memory was truly remarkable. He often repeated letters, which he had written or received twenty years before on some memorable occasion; and if opportunity occurred to compare them with the originals, it would be found that he had scarcely varied a word. He always maintained that he could distinctly remember some things, which happened before he was two years old. One day, when his parents were absent, and Polly was busy about her work, he sat bolstered up in his cradle, when a sudden gust of wind blew a large piece of paper through the entry. To his uneducated senses, it seemed to be a living creature, and he screamed violently. It was several hours before he recovered from his extreme terror. When his parents returned, he tried to make them understand how a strange thing had come into the house, and run, and jumped, and made a noise. But his lisping language was so very imperfect, that they were unable to conjecture what had so frightened him. For a long time after, he would break out into sudden screams, whenever the remembrance came over him. At seventy-five years old, he told me he remembered exactly how the paper then appeared to him, and what sensations of terror it excited in his infant breast.

He had a large old-fashioned cow-bell, which was always rung to summon the family to their meals. He resisted having one of more modern construction, because he said that pleasantly reminded him of the time when he was a boy, and used to drive the cows to pasture. Sometimes, he rang it much longer than was necessary to summon the household. On such occasions, I often observed him smiling while he stood shaking the bell; and he would say, "I am thinking how Polly looked, when the cow kicked her over; milk-pail and all. I can see it just as if it happened yesterday. O, what fun it was!"

He often spoke of the first slave whose escape he managed, in the days of his apprenticeship. He was wont to exclaim, "How well I remember the anxious, imploring, look that poor fellow gave me, when I told him I would be his friend! It rises up before me now. If I were a painter, I could show it to thee."