Appendix 393 



Left to himself, his will began to grow imperious. The 

 busy mother could not severely scold her ailing child; but 

 a sharp rebuke had probably often been pleasantcr to him 

 than the milder treatment that resulted from affectionate 

 compassion, but showed no real sympathy. It is evident, 

 from the tone in which he always spoke of his childhood, 

 that his recollections of it were not altogether agreeable. 

 It was undoubtedly clouded by a want of sympathy, which 

 he could not understand at the time, but which appeared 

 plainly enough when his genius came into play. It is the 

 same kind of clouded childhood that so often occurs in 

 literary biography, where there was great mutual affection 

 and no ill feeling, but a lack of that instinctive apprehension 

 of motives and aims, which makes each one perfectly toler- 

 ant of each other. 



When Andrew was seven years old, his father died, and 

 his elder brother succeeded to the management of the nur- 

 sery business. Andrew's developing tastes led him to the 

 natural sciences, to botany and mineralogy. As he grew 

 older he began to read the treatises upon these favorite 

 subjects, and went, at length, to an academy at Mont- 

 gomery, a town not far from Newburgh, and in the same 

 county. Those who remember him here, speak of him as a 

 thoughtful, reserved boy, looking fixedly out of his large, 

 dark brown eyes, and carrying his brow a little inclined 

 forward, as if slightly defiant. He was a poor boy, and 

 very proud. Doubtless that indomitable will had already 

 resolved that he should not be the least of the men that he 

 and his schoolfellows would presently become. He was 

 shy, and made few friends among the boys. He kept his 

 own secrets, and his companions do not remember that he 

 gave any hint, while at Montgomery Academy, of his pecu- 

 liar power. Neither looking backward nor forward, was 

 the prospect very fascinating to his dumb, and probably a 

 little dogged, ambition. Behind were the few first years of 

 childhood, sickly, left much alone in the cottage and garden, 

 with nothing in those around him (as he felt without know- 

 ing it) that strictly sympathized with him; and yet, as 



