Autobiographical Passages 61 



miles or more, two behind my father's horses, and two mostly 

 by stage coach and canal boat. Besides these many shorter 

 ones. When fourteen I was laid up by an extremely virulent 

 sumach poisoning, making me for some time partially blind, 

 after which, and possibly as a result, I was troubled for 

 several years with a disorder of the eyes, and the oculists / 

 advised that I should be kept from study. 



It followed that, at the time my schoolmates were enter- 

 ing college, I was nominally the pupil of a topographical 

 engineer 1 but really for the most part given over to a de- 

 cently restrained vagabond life, generally pursued under the 

 guise of an angler, a fowler or a dabbler on the shallowest 

 shores of the deep sea of the natural sciences. 



A hardly conscious exercise of reason in choosing where I 

 should rest and which way I should be going in these vagran- 

 cies, a little musing upon the question what made for or 

 against my pleasure in them, led me along to a point at 

 .which when by good chance the books fell in my way I was 

 sufficiently interested to get some understanding of what 

 such men as Price, Gilpin, Shenstone and Marshall thought 

 upon the subject. 



Rural tastes at length led me to make myself a farmer. 

 I had several years of training on widely separated farms, 

 then bought a small farm for myself which I afterwards sold 

 in order to buy a larger, and upon this I lived ten years. 

 I was a good farmer and a good neighbor, served on the 

 school committee, improved the highways, was secretary of 

 a local farmer's club and of the County Agricultural Society, 

 took prizes for the best crops of wheat and turnips and the 

 best assortment of fruits, imported an English machine, and 

 in partnership with a friend established the first cylindrical 

 drainage tile works in America. 



But during this period also I managed to make several 

 long and numerous short journeys, generally paying my 



1 According to his father's diary, Frederick began the study of engineering 

 with Professor Barton of Andover, Mass., November 20, 1837. 



