Page:Pioneersorsource01cooprich.djvu/92

 interruptions of field-labour, wood-chopping, and such other toils as were imposed on his brothers, Elnathan was indebted for this exemption from labour, in some measure, to his extraordinary growth, which, leaving him pale, inanimate, and listless, induced his tender mother to pronounce him "a sickly boy, and one that was not equal to work, but who might arn a living, com fortably enough, by taking to pleading law, or turning minister, or doctoring, or some sitch-like easy calling." Still there was a great uncertainty which of these vocations the youth was best endowed to fill with credit and profit; but, having no other employment, the strippling was constantly lounging about the "homestead," munching green apples, and hunting for sorrel; when the same sagacious eye, that had brought to light his latent talents, seized upon this circumstance, as a clue to direct his future path through the turmoils of the world. "Elnathan was cut out for a doctor," she knew, "for he was for ever digging for yarbs, and tasting all kinds of things thatgrow'd about the lots. Then again he had a nateral love for doctor-stuff, for when she had left the bilious pills out for her man, all nicely covered with maple sugar, just ready to take, Nathan had come in, and swallowed them, for all the world as if they were nothing, while Ichabod (her husband) could never get one down without making sitch desperate faces, that it was awful to look on."

This discovery decided the matter. Elnathar, then about fifteen, was, much like a wild colt, caught and trimmed, by clipping his bushy locks; dressed in a suit of homespun, died in the butternut bark; furnished with a "New Testament," and a "Webster's Spelling-Book," and sent to school. As the boy was by nature quite shrewd enough, and had previously, at odd times, laid the