Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 3 



He learnt amazing fast, for his mind was fully given to it. He 

 did not seem like other children ; he seemed better. His mother 

 was a beautiful, nice woman." 



The third old lady said that " Nat. was a little, still creature ; 

 and his mother a mighty free, good-natured woman. She used 

 to say, ' Who should n't be cheerly if a Christian should n't ?' Her 

 children took after her, and she had a particular way of guarding 

 them against evil." 



These I testify to be their very words, as I pencilled them 

 down at the time. And they show, I think, very clearly, the in- 

 fluence of the mother's mind and heart upon the character of her 

 son. Of that mother, in after life, and to its close, he often spoke 

 in terms of the highest admiration and the strongest affection, and 

 in his earnest manner would say — " My mother loved me — idol- 

 ized me — worshipped me." 



After leaving the dame's school, the only other instruction he 

 ever received was obtained at the schools of his native town, 

 which were wholly inadequate to furnish even the groundwork 

 and elements of a respectable education. I have heard it stated, 

 on the authority of one of his schoolfellows, that the only book 

 in their school was a dictionary, which belonged to the master, 

 who gave out the words from it to be spelt by the boys. I have 

 likewise been told by one who lived in Salem at the time, that the 

 master of this school, a person of violent temper, gave young Bow- 

 ditch, when he was about five or six years old, a very difiicult sum 

 in arithmetic to perform. His scholar went to his desk, and soon 

 afterwards brought up his slate with the question solved. The 

 master, surprised at the suddenness of his return, asked him who 

 had been doing the sum for him ; and on answering " Nobody — 

 T did it myself," he gave him a severe chastisement for lying; not 

 believing it possible that he could, of himself, without any assis- 

 tance, perform so difficult a question. 



But the advantages of school, such as they were, he was obliged 

 to forego at the early age of ten years, '' his poverty and not his 

 will consenting," that he might go into his father's shop and help 

 to support the family. He was soon, however, transferred as an 

 apprentice to a ship-chandler, and afterwards became a clerk in a 

 large establishment of the same kind, where he continued until 

 he went to sea. It was whilst he was an apprentice in the ship- 

 chandler's shop that he first manifested that strong bent, or what 



