Page:The Pathfinder of the Seas.djvu/27

 HIS EARLY YEARS 3 The travel-worn family established a new home near Franklin, Tennessee, some eighteen miles north of Nash- ville. This section of the country was then on the outskirts of the western frontier, and it was in such an environment that young Maury spent the most forma- tive years of his life. As a lad, he had to take his share of the burdensome work on the farm ; and it appears from an incident long afterwards related by his brother that he had the distaste for farm work, which is common to boys. Their father had set them to work picking cotton, and Matthew showed his inventiveness by devising a way of shortening their labor. He suggested to his brother that they make short work of the cotton picking by pulling off the cotton balls bodily and cramming them into an old hollow hickory stump that was full of water. The scheme was a good one so long as it was undiscov- ered, but after a time the watchful eye of their father detected the boys in the act and a flogging was the result. The lives of the children on the frontier, how- ever, were by no means wholly filled with toil. There was ample opportunity to enjoy outdoor sports in all seasons of the year, and indoors the Maury family were not without resources for passing the time pleasantly and profitably. There were traditions of culture and even of scholarship in the family, and besides it should be remem- bered that the homes of the early settlers were rarely without at least a few good books. Maury's father, having observed that his own father had been too stern with his children, treated his large family with considerable indulgence; yet he was strict as to their religious training in the home and gathered the children together morning and night each day to read the Psalter antiphonally. In this way Matthew