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 



