Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/253

 An Elder of Ye 0/defi Time.

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��well learned, he could never command the good will of his teachers nor the love of his fellow pupils, always being told that he had more knowledge than good manners. Nature had done more for the mind of Leland than for his personal appearance.

Rustic in his ways, bashful to awk- wardness, he was never able to entirely overcome the stiffness that was second nature to him, nor win for friends, those whom he most admired. Fond of pleasures, he mingled in all the frolics and pastimes of the day ; being leader in many discussions, spending his evenings until a late hour at the country paring-bees, huskings, parties, dances, and the endless variety of enter- tainments which have always been de- vised by the young and amusement- loving class, and will ever be, so long as time shall last.

In spite of this, his studies were marked with such signal progress, and his mental endowments so evident that the minister called frequently at the house of his parishioner as John grew towards his sixteenth year, urging with much eloquence the propriety of sending the boy to college and prepar- ing him for his life work — that of the ministry — "a field," said the dignified man as he took his cane and hat to de- part, '• in which my young friend, John, is eminently fitted to succeed."

It often chanced that before the min- ister in his powdered wig and minister- ial suit of black disappeared from off the streets of Grafton, his place at the home of the Lelands would be filled by the good-natured, bustling, village doctor, who, in his goings and comings to and fro, had marked the young man under many trying circumstances, and fancied that he saw the material, in the rough, for a cool, superior, and thoroughly successfiil man of medicine : and quite

��insisted that he should begin, without further delay, a course of reading and of lectures toward that end.

Leland senior, a man of rugged character, had his own opinions upon the subject, and wished to retain his gifted son as a staff for his own declin- ing days ; while John himself, in secret, designed to shine at the legal bar and devote the thunder of his eloquence to a profession he most admired. To be- come a New England Judge was the goal to which, at sixteen, he aimed.

As is often true, while man proposed, God held the balance of power in his fist, and in silence the work went on toward the consummation He had in view for His child.

John Leland belonged to that wide- spread family that raled once in Britain and over the hills of Scotland — the Saxons ; — he was tall, well formed, and vigorous ; his eyes were a bluish gray ; his hair a light brown. Taught by his parents to live simply and dress plainly, they were his life long habits. His at- tachments were strong, whether to friends or places : his words were ready and fluent ; a lover of music and poetr}-, his nature was a sensitive one, his tem- perament nervous and imaginary ; but with a well-poised mind, able and tal- ented, of great personal power and in- fluence combined with a native eccen- tricity, his life is a marked illustration oi what can be achieved by perseverance, self-sacrificing labor, positive character, and humble trust and faith in the prom- ises of the Great Master. The places that he held, the respect and admira- tion he always won from men in high position, the magnetism with which he swayed the immense audiences to whom he spake, and the impress stamped, not only upon the minds of his contempo- raries, but upon those of men who live to-day, aU tell in unmistakable language

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