Page:The life and letters of John Brown (Sanborn).djvu/34

14 tell you that with such a feeling & but little chance of going to school at all: he did not become much of a schollarscholar [sic]. He would always choose to stay at home & work hard rather than be sent to school; & during the warm season might generally be seen barefooted & bareheaded: with Buck skin Breeches suspended often with one leather strap over his shoulder but sometimes with Two. To be sent off through the wilderness alone to very considerable distances was particularly his delight; & in this he was often indulged so that by the time he was Twelve years old he was sent off more than a Hundred Miles with companies of cattle; & he would have thought his character much injured had he been obliged to be helped in any such job. This was a boyish kind of feeling but characteristic however.

At Eight years old, John was left a Motherless boy which loss was complete & permanent for notwithstanding his Father again married to a sensible, intelligent, and on many accounts a very estimable woman; yet he never adopted her in feeling; but continued to pine after his own Mother for years. This opperatedoperated [sic] very unfavourably upponupon [sic] him; as he was both naturally fond of females; &, withall, extremely diffident; & deprived him of a suitable connecting link between the different sexes; the want of which might under some circumstances, have proved his ruin.

When the war broke out with England, his Father soon commenced furnishing the troops with beef cattle, the collecting & driving of which afforded him some opportunity for the chase (on foot) of wild steers & other cattle through the woods. During this war he had some chance to form his own boyish judgment of men & measures: & to become somewhat familiarly acquainted with some who have figured before the country since that time. The effect of what he saw during the war was to so far disgust him with Military affairs that he would neither train, or drill; but paid fines; & got along like a Quaker until his age finally has cleared him of Military duty.

During the war with England a circumstance occurred that in the end made him a most determined Abolitionist: & led him to declare, or Swear: Eternal war with Slavery. He was staying for a short time with a very gentlemanly landlord since a United States Marshall who held a slave boy near his own age very active, inteligentintelligent [sic] and good feeling; & to whom John was under considerable obligation for numerous little acts of kindness. The master made a great pet of John: brought him to table with his first company; & friends; called their attention to every little smart thing he said or did: & to the fact of his being more than a hundred miles from home with a company of cattle alone; while the negro boy (who was fully if not more than his equal) was badly clothed, poorly fed; & lodged in cold