When Allen was in England, a prisoner, persons who had heard him represented as a giant in stature, and scarcely short of a cannibal in habits and disposition, came to see him, and gazed at him with mingled wonder and disgust. It is said, that, on one occasion, a tenpenny nail was thrown in to him, as if he were a wild animal. He is reported to have picked it up, and, in his vexation, to have bitten it in two. It is in allusion to this that Doctor Hopkins wrote,—
"Lo, Allen 'scaped from British jails,
His tushes broke by biting nails," &c.
But however rude were Allen's manners, he was a man of inflexible integrity. He was sued, upon a certain occasion, for a note of hand, which was witnessed by an individual residing at Boston. When the case came on for trial in one of the Vermont courts, the lawyer whom Allen had employed to manage it so as to get time, rose, and, for the purpose of securing this object, pleaded a denial of the signature.
It chanced that Allen was in the court-house at this moment, and hearing this plea, he strode across the court-room, and, while his eyes flashed with indignation, he spoke to the court as follows: "May it please your honors, that's a lie! I say I did sign that note, and I didn't employ Lawyer C****** to come here and tell a falsehood. That's a genuine note, and I signed it, please your honors, and I mean to pay it; all I want is to put it over till next court, when I expect to have money enough to meet it!" This speech gratified the opposing counsel so much, that he immediately consented to the delay which Allen desired.
Though Allen's education was limited, by reading and reflection he had acquired a considerable amount of knowledge. Presuming upon this, and guided by the eccentricity which marked his character, he ventured to assail the Christian religion, in a book entitled, "The Oracles of Reason." Though he here expressed belief in a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, he rejected the Bible, and seemed to favor the Pythagorian doctrine of transmigration of souls. He entertained the idea that he was himself destined to reappear on earth in the condition of a great white horse! These absurdities show into what depths of folly a great man may be led, if he permit his self-conceit to involve him in the discussion of subjects beyond his grasp.
DAVID CROCKETT.
This individual was one of those remarkable characters, formed by the rough and adventurous circumstances of western life. His paternal grandfather and grandmother, who were of Irish descent, were murdered by the Creek Indians, in Tennessee. He had an uncle who was wounded at the same time, and remained in captivity with the savages for seventeen months. The subject of our memoir was born in 1786, on the banks of Nola-chucky river, he being the fifth son.
At this period, Tennessee was nearly a wilderness, and the forests were still, to a great extent, the dominion of the Indian and the wild beast. Brought up in this condition, his youthful imagination tinged by the tragic story of his ancestors, it was natural that our young hero should have become an early lover of those wild enterprises and hazardous adventures which belong to border life.