Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/46

38 Dianthe Lusk, John Brown's first wife, died in child-birth, August10, 1832, having borne him seven children, two of whom died very young. On July11, 1833, now thirty-three years of age, he married Mary Ann Day, a girl of seventeen, only five years older than his oldest child. She bore him thirteen children, seven of whom died young. Thus seven sons and four daughters grew to maturity and his wife, Mary, survived him twenty-five years. It was, all told, a marvelous family—large and well-disciplined, yet simple almost to poverty, and hard working. No sooner were the children grown than the wise father ceased to command and simply asked or advised. He wrote to his eldest son when first he started out in life in characteristic style:

"I think the situation in which you have been placed by Providence at this early period of your life will afford to yourself and others some little test of the sway yon may be expected to exert over minds in after life, and I am glad on the whole to have you brought in some measure to the test in your youth. If you cannot now go into a disorderly country school and gain its confidence and esteem, and reduce it to good order and waken up the energies and the very soul of every rational being in it—yes, of every mean, ill-behaved, ill-governed boy and girl that compose it, and secure the good-will of the parents,—then how are you to stimulate asses to attempt a passage of the Alps? If you run with footmen and they should weary you, how should you contend with horses! If in the land of peace