JOHN WESLEY POWELL 3 



There were but three or four other pupils and their attendance 

 was rather irregular; all but John were grown men. Mr. Crook- 

 ham devoted himself largely to his own studies, especially those in 

 natural history. With him there were no "set" lessons; he gave 

 his pupils books to read and occasionally talked with them and 

 asked them questions. 



Within a few months, matters became quiet in the village and 

 John returned to the common school, but Mr. Crookham took great 

 pains to direct his reading. He brought him Hume's History of 

 England and other historical works and talked with him on the sub- 

 jects of which they treated. While giving him no books in natural 

 history, he made him quite familiar with a few plants, insects, and 

 birds, and also with some minerals, and by frequent conversations 

 upon these various subjects, interested him in the characteristics 

 of plants and animals, and the properties of minerals, and at the 

 same time taught him many of the elementary facts of chemistry. 



Mr. Crookham, who was a large- framed, corpulent man, often 

 asked John to read to him, but such readings were usually inter- 

 rupted by his own explanations and by general conversations, which 

 so thoroughly illuminated the subject in hand that the boy, in his 

 youthful imagination, came to regard his tutor as a giant of learn- 

 ing and benevolence. Sometimes he took John into the woods, 

 where every step seemed to suggest something of interest. He 

 would sit down on a rock, stump, or log and describe to his pupil 

 what he had found. Naturally, as the youth grew into manhood, 

 he looked back with great pleasure to those days, also with wonder 

 that a man so absorbed in his books should have taken such in- 

 terest in a boy so young. The old gentleman's warm friendship 

 for the parents was not the only influence which stimulated this 

 devotion. He saw in his protege* that genius which the father 

 failed to discover, and watched its development with affectionate 

 anxiety. 



John's father and mother were Methodists; Mr. Crookham 

 was a Calvinist. For hours the boy would listen to their conversa- 

 tions on religious subjects, and in this way acquired a good many 

 ideas, rather large ones, too, for one of his age, on a variety of 

 theological questions. He came to understand that his mother 

 was not so entirely orthodox as his father ; her opinions were per- 

 haps slightly tinted with Swedenborgian mysticism. Be that as it 

 may, her theology seemed to his boyish perceptions a great deal 

 better than that of his father or Mr. Crookham. When the two 

 were discussing their relative opinions, it was John's habit to wait 



