“Again the imag’d scene survey,
The rolling Hellespontic Sea,
Whence the Persian from the shore
Proudly pass’d his millions o’er.
“And behold to nearer view,
Here thy own lov’d country too—
Virginia! which produc’d to me
A pupil fair and bright like thee.”
What with a horse, the artisanry of verse, a mild philosophy, and the business of his office, John Davis spent three months very agreeably on Bull Run, within sight of the Blue Ridge. Then a New Jersey farmer of the neighborhood discovered that his eldest boy wrote a better hand than the teacher. Davis resigned the academy to the carpenter of the plantation. “I now once more seized my staff and walked towards Baltimore. It was a killing circumstance to separate from Virginia (the student of geography), but who shall persume to contend against fate? Phyllida amo ante alias, nam me discedere flevit. I embarked August, 1802, in the good ship Olive, Captain Norman, lying at Baltimore, for Cowes, in the Isle of Wight.”