XIV MEMOIR. 



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 

 peculiar power. Neither looking backward nor forward, 

 was the prospect very fascinating to his dumb, and proba- 

 bly 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 knowing it) that strictly sympathized with him ; 

 and yet, as always in such cases, of a nature whose devel- 

 opment craved the most generous sympathy : these few 

 years, too, cast among all the charms of a landscape which 

 the Fishkill hills lifted from littleness, and the broad river 

 inspired with a kind of grandeur ; years, which the univer- 

 sal silence of the country, always so imposing to young 

 imaginations, and the rainbow pomp of the year, as it 

 came and went up and down the river-banks and over the 

 mountains, and the general solitude of country life, were 

 not very likely to enliven. Before, lay a career of hard 

 work in a pursuit which rarely enriches the workman, with 

 little apparent promise of leisure to pursue his studies or 

 to follow his tastes. It is natural enough, that in the 

 midst of such prospects, the boy, delicately organized to 

 appreciate his position, should have gone to his recitations 

 and his play in a very silent if not stern : manner, all 

 the more reserved and silent for the firm resolution to 

 master and not be mastered. It is hard to fancy that he 

 was ever a blithe boy. The gravity of maturity came 

 early upon him. Those who saw him only in later years 

 can, probably, easily see the boy at Montgomery Academy, 



