“It has disturbed thy father as never before did anything since he would not join with Friend Bradford against the Stamp Act. I would I had seen him then, or this time. I like sometimes to see a strong man in just anger. Oh, mon Dieu! what did I say! I am but half a Quaker, I fear.” My mother never would turn away from the creed of her people, but she did not altogether fancy the ways of Friends.
“Eh, mon fils, sometimes I say naughty words. Give me a sweet little pat on the cheek for my badness, and always come to me with all thy troubles.” Then I kissed her, and we went out to play hide-and-find in the orchard.
My father’s grim, sarcastic humour left him as years went on, and he became as entirely serious as I ever knew a man to be. I think on this occasion his after-annoyance, which endured for days, was more because of having threatened Dove than for any other cause. He no doubt regarded me as the maker of the mischief which had tempted him for a moment to forget himself, and for many a day his unjust severity proved that he did not readily forgive. But so it was always. My mother never failed to understand me, which my father seemed rarely able to do. If I did ill he used the strap with little mercy, but neither in these early years, nor in those which followed, did he ever give me a word of praise. Many years afterward I found a guinea in a folded paper, laid away in my father’s desk. On the outer cover he had written, “This belongs to Hugh. He were better without it.”
My mother scarce ever let slip her little French expletives or phrases in my father’s hearing. He hated all French things, and declared the language did not ring true—that it was a slippery tongue, in which it was easy to lie. A proud, strong man he was in those days, of fixed beliefs, and of unchanging loyalty to the king. In his own house he was feared by his son, his clerks, and his servants; but not by my mother, who charmed him, as she did all other men, and had in most things her desire.
Outside of his own walls few men cared to oppose him. He was rich, and coldly despotic; a man exact and just in business, but well able, and as willing, to help with a free hand whatever cause was of interest to Friends. My Aunt Gainor, a little his senior, was one of the few over whom he had no manner of control. She went her own way, and it was by no means his way, as I shall make more clear by and by.
Two days later I was taken to the academy, or the college, as some called it, which is now the university. My father wrote my name, as you may see it in the catalogue, and his own signature, with the date of 6th month 4th, 1765. Beneath it is the entry of John Warder and his father, Joseph; for Jack had also been removed from Dove’s dominion because of what my father said to Joseph, a man always pliable, and advised to do what larger men thought good. Thus it came about that my friend Jack and I were by good fortune kept in constant relation. Our schoolmate, the small maid so slight of limb, so dark and tearful, was soon sent away to live with an aunt in Bristol, on the Delaware, having become an orphan by the death of her mother. Darthea Peniston passed out of my life for many years, having been, through the accident of her tenderness, the means for me of a complete and fortunate change.
III
The academy was, and still is, a plain brick building, set back from Fourth street, and having a large gravelled space in front and also at the back. The main school-room occupied its whole westward length, and upstairs was a vast room, with bare joists above, in which, by virtue of the deed of gift, any Christian sect was free to worship if temporarily deprived of a home. Here the great Whitefield preached, and here generations of boys were taught. Behind the western playground was the graveyard of Christ Church. He was thought a brave lad who, after school at dusk in winter, dared to climb over and search around the tombs of the silent dead for a lost ball or what not.