

IF// 



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Figure 28. — Sketch of slide-rest as built by Sellers about 

 1820. In letter from George Escol Sellers to Horace Wells 

 Sellers dated Crestview, October 14, 1895. Peale-Sellers 

 papers. Photo courtesy of American Philosophical Society 

 Library. 



It is often the most trifling thing that changes the 

 destiny of man. I will now . . . relate as nearly as 

 I can, as [Saxton] did to me, the incident that decided 

 his course and took him from the farm into the 

 workshop. 



He had sprung up rapidly, and, as he said, had 

 outgrown his strength. The work on the farm was 

 irksome to him, and every chance he could get he 

 would steal away with an old flint-lock musket, whose 

 barrel he had shortened to convert it into a fowling 

 piece. He said his fondness for hunting and neglect 

 of the farm work greatly distressed his father, who 

 could know nothing of the feeling of lassitude that 

 came over him, and the utter averison he had for his 

 occupation. Often when he was thought to be hunt- 

 ing, he was lying in the shade of some tree thinking, 

 as he expressed it, of improbable possibilities that 



might occur to change his father's views and take him 

 from the plow, that was nothing but tramp, tramp 

 back and forth in the furrow, exhausting physical 

 powers and leaving the brain to stagnate. 82 



His father, to encourage him to greater exertion in 

 the line he wished him to pursue, on certain condi- 

 tions, promised him a rifle. He said he was not 

 conscious that he had improved any; that he had 



82 Henry's memoir of Saxton does not mention farm work 

 specifically, but since the community was in rural surroundings 

 and work in the nail factory may have been seasonal, there was 

 plenty of time for farm work and hunting, too, in the long 

 years of youth. However, that Sellers was confused as to 

 Saxton's boyhood is indicated by his mention, in the next 

 paragraph, of Lancaster, which is more than 100 miles from 

 Huntingdon. Carlisle, mentioned later in the text, is 50 miles 

 from Huntingdon. 



58 



