Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/44

 and then. Hobby was a short man, with one eye, and too good-humoured or too timid to be a good teacher, even of the a-b-c's and the little else we learned.

My father was kind to this man, and perhaps knew his history. He would even have allowed him the use of the rod, with the aid of which I might have profited more largely, for I am of his opinion that children should be strictly brought up. Hobby, being of a humourous turn, seems to me, as I remember him, to have resembled the grave-digger in the play of "Hamlet." He sometimes amused and at other times terrified us by tales of London or of his recent life as a sexton. He believed many of the negro superstitions—as that if a snake's head was cut off the tail would live until it thundered—and was much afraid of having what he called black magic put upon him by the negroes.

I did not learn much from Hobby and preferred to be out of doors. My father considered, I believe, that, as I was a younger son and must in some way support myself, I should be well trained in both mind and body, and had he lived the chance of the former might have been bettered.