S t o r y    B o o k m a r k s
Locke advised to get a good education A box of books arrive Locke is a problem for schoolmaster Good and bad habits of thought	Friendship with a self-taught surveyor New school term, no schoolmaster A good schoolmaster is found

	E x c e r p t   1

   "And one thing more, before we part, Mr. Amsden -- let me repeat to you my advice, to give this elder son of yours the chance for a good education."
   "Do you think he has capacities which would warrant such a step, sir?" asked the gratified mother of the boy.
   "Indeed, I certainly do, Madam; even to sending him to a college," replied the other.
   "That would be impossible in my circumstances, provided I thought as you do on the subject," remarked Mr. Amsden.
   "Let him go to a good academy, then," rejoined the stranger.
   "Well, now, I don't exactly know about that," replied the other. "He may go winters to our district schools as long as he pleases; and I think, for the present, at least, that he should, and will be, quite satisfied with that. Is it not so, Locke?"2
   "Why," answered the boy diffidently, "I should be satisfied to go to our district masters, if they could tell me the reasons of things, which I always wish to know."
   "That is right, Master Locke," responded the stranger; "you have expressed, in almost a word, the great aim and essence of all true knowledge and philosophy -- 'to know the reason of things.' Yes, my young friend, let that still be your ambition; and, if your father will give you the opportunity, I doubt not you will do honor to the motto you have chosen."3
   "Well, I would be a scholar, Locke, if I was you," added Mary, with charming naivete; "and if you will, and come and keep school where I live, I will go to school to you, and become a great scholar too, if I can."
   The travellers now took their leave of the family, and drove from the yard, attended by the repeatedly expressed good wishes of the good-hearted farmer, and his equally kind and more high-minded companion. And, in these wishes, they were joined by another, who, though he had uttered less, yet felt more than they had expressed! That was our young hero; who, as the rest of the family returned into the house, stood mutely gazing after the receding carriage, till its last traces were lost to his sight; when he slowly turned away, the big drops of tears standing in his eyes, and his lip quivering with emotions which had been awakened by this brief, but to him, as will appear in the sequel, important visit of these interesting strangers.

CHAPTER II

"The dream, the thirst, the wild desire,
Delirious, yet divine -- to know!"
BULWER

   THE accidental call of the travellers at the house of the farmer, as narrated in our opening chapter, formed an era in the life of Locke Amsden. By that call, new thoughts had been suggested to his mind -- new feelings and hopes awakened in his bosom; and, as the slumbering energies of his intellectual and moral nature became thus aroused, young ambition began to point him upward to the temple of science, over whose distanced-hallowed pinnacles floated the mystic banner of fame. At first, every word of the revered stranger was recalled, every position revolved over and over in mind, and every argument carefully weighed; and the result of the process was faith and conviction. Then came the inspiriting words of the beautiful little being, who, in angel shape, had thus appeared in his path to incite him onward; and, "I would be a scholar, Locke," continued to ring in his ears. "Ay, and I will be a scholar!" he at length mentally ejaculated; "and then I will go where she lives, and she shall know that I have worthily done her bidding, and justified the good opinion of her father. But where does she live? -- yes, where?" For he now recollected, that he had not learned from her, or her father, the place of their residence; and, under the proud and joyous impulse which his reverie had imparted, he flew to his parents with the inquiry. But neither of them could answer it. They had not ascertained even the family name of their visiters. Mr. Amsden had thought of asking the man these particulars; but, it occurring to him that his wife would naturally find them out from the little girl, he desisted. And this Mrs. Amsden had intended to do; but her attention was so much engrossed in the cares of preparing the dinner, that she had neglected it, till the return of the gentleman into the house deprived her of the opportunity of doing so, without appearing obtrusive. The Christian name of the girl, therefore, with the fact, that she and her father came from a place some fifty miles to the south, and were destined to another nearly as far to the north, was all that had been ascertained concerning them, other than what their personal appearance indicated. But, although our young hero was thus left in ignorance of the names, residence, character, and calling of his new friends, and for many years was doomed to remain so, yet the event of their visit was not the less destined to exercise an important influence on his future life and fortunes. It seemed to be, indeed, one of those trifling incidents which so often seem to change the fate of individuals, and impart an enduring impulse towards a destiny to which, in all human probability, they otherwise would never have been called. Such an impulse had been imparted, in the present instance, by the mere call of two entire strangers; and that simple incident would probably have been sufficient of itself, had no other grown out of it, to give a new and continuing direction to the energies of him on whom it so peculiarly operated. But there yet remained to be added another occurrence arising from the circumstances of the first, which was directly calculated to strengthen every impulse already received; and every resolution formed under it.
   About a month from the time the incidents we have been sketching transpired, a strong board box, directed to Master Locke Amsden, was left at the door by a teamster; who, saying he had received it from another teamster, with directions to leave it at this place, went on his way, without giving any further information respecting it, or those who sent it.
   Wondering what might be the contents of the box, the receipt of which was so unexpected to him, though partly anticipating the source from which it must have come, Locke flew for his hammer, and knocked off the cover; when, to his joyful surprise, he found the box filled with books, upon the top of which lay a neatly folded and superscribed little billet, directed to himself. Eagerly snatching up the paper, he opened it, and read, in the finely-traced characters of an unsettled female hand, the laconic contents: --

   "A lot of old, musty volumes, in return for your nice little present. Father has picked them out from his old college books, and given them to me to send to you, saying you would like them. If you think, as he says, about them, I shall be pleased to have you accept them from

   With a low shout of irrepressible joy, he now hastily caught up his treasure, rushed into the house, and, calling on his mother to come and witness his good fortune, fell to unpacking the books, greedily running over the title-pages of each, as, with many a half-suppressed exclamation of pleasure, he successively took out the different volumes, which, to the number of eight or ten, the box contained, and spread them around him on the floor. The collection consisted of . a complete set of mathematics, from common arithmetic to fluxions; a standard work on natural philosophy; another on astronomy; together with separate treatises upon geology, mineralogy, and chemistry; while the whole was accompanied by a good set of mathematical instruments.4
   From what we have already shown the reader of the character and inclinations of Locke, it may be easily imagined with what rapture he doted on this munificent and appropriate present, not only from its intrinsic value, and the untold advantages which he was to reap from it, but for the fair giver, and her prompting father, by whom it had been so delicately and flatteringly bestowed, -- with what pleasure he looked forward to the time when he should be allowed to devote himself wholly to the great, but coveted task, which, in these books, he now saw set before him. By most others, perhaps, the course of mathematics here presented, had been viewed only as a labor of almost endless toil and difficulty. He, however, looked upon it but as a labor of delight, so much the better for its promised length, since that would add so much the more to the fund of his happiness. For the first week, his leisure was given to looking over the subject matter on which the volumes of his prized little library severally treated, and arranging the order, in which his own good sense and discrimination rightly taught him they should be studied, Having settled this, and accordingly determined to make mathematics his first study, while he should proceed with geology and the like as his light reading, he began with algebra, assiduously, and with his usual systematic perseverance, devoting to it every hour he could snatch from his customary employments on the farm. And thus, making what progress he could, in the brief intervals allowed him for the purpose, and leaving all knotty points to be thought over and solved while at work in the field, he alone, unassisted and unprompted, steadily pursued the course he had marked out for himself, neither seeking nor asking any other recreation or pleasure than what his studies afforded. But, although this course was a source of constant pleasure to Locke, not so did it soon become to his honest but simple-minded father, who, rightly enough attributing his son's growing inadvertencies in business to these books, often wished, in his heart, the whole collection at the bottom of the sea. And these inadvertencies, which so naturally grew out of the course he was pursuing, were, it must be confessed, not unfrequently of a character to cause vexation to a business man of a less petulant turn than Mr. Amsden. For, if the latter had reason to complain of his son in this respect before, he had much more cause for doing so now; since, with the greatest willingness and undoubted capacities for work, the boy too often effected but little, and as often did that little wrong. In those kinds of labor, to be sure, where he could induce his father to task him, he would apply every energy of body and mind, till his task was completed, which was generally by noon; when, for the remainder of the day, he might be seen lying on the grass, under some shady tree, with his book and instruments spread before him. But in work which would not admit of this, the problems that he took with him in his head into the field, often led to singular oversights in the business about which his hands were employed. If he was sent on an errand to some other part of the farm, he would sometimes wholly forget what he went for. Sometimes he would leave the bars down, the cows unmilked, or the hogs unfed; and sometimes, when hoeing alone in the cornfield, and when some mathematical question occurred to his mind which he wished to solve, he would stop work, and making a smooth bed of earth to serve for slate or paper, fall to figuring or making diagrams with his finger in the place he had thus prepared, and think no more of his hoeing, perhaps, till roused from his study by the loud note of the tin house-trumpet summoning him home to his mid-day or evening meal. All these, as innocently done as they were, cost him, as may well be supposed, many a scolding and fretful expostulation from his impatient and driving father, who, as the season of outdoor labor drew to a close, expressed himself heartily thankful that the time for beginning the winter school had at length come, that Locke's body might now go where his head and heart had been all summer. On the last point, at least, the father and son were quite of the same mind. And, accordingly, the latter, as the long wished-for period when he could be allowed to give himself wholly to his studies arrived, joyfully packed up his books, and changed the scene of his mental operations from the farm to the school-house. But here again it was his fortune soon to become, though not exactly in the same way as before, the unintentional cause of much uneasiness and perplexity to another personage. That other personage was the schoolmaster, who -- his acquirements, as usual with the mass of our district-school teachers, being confined to common arithmetic, grammar, and the like, without the ability to illustrate one half of the principles even of these -- viewed with considerable alarm, at the outset, the formidable-looking books which Locke had brought into the school with the avowed intention of pursuing the studies they contained. And he made several attempts to draw the other from his purpose. Common arithmetic, said he, should first be thoroughly studied, and all the sums worked over and over, till they were as familiar as the alphabet. Locke, in reply, said he should like to have a sum pointed out to him in any of the arithmetics which he could not already do; though, if the master would illustrate to him the rules of allegation and double position, he would like to listen, as he did not quite understand all the reasons for the results of these two rules. Not caring to push the matter any farther on that tack, the teacher next recommended geography as a useful and interesting study. In answer to this, Locke proposed to submit himself to an examination, being able, as he believed, to answer every ordinary question that could be raised either on the maps or in the text-book. The master then mentioned English grammar, advising the other again to commit the grammar book to memory. Here, also, he was met by the obdurate pupil, who, though willing to join the parsing class at their lessons, objected to spending any more time upon his grammar book; and, by the way of furnishing a reason for his objections, he immediately brought forward the book in question, and, handing it to the former, kept him reluctantly looking over till the whole was rattled off at one recitation.5
   Being foiled in these and every other attempt of the kind, the master concluded to let Locke go on in his chosen pursuits unmolested; and right thankful would he have been for a reciprocation of the favor. This, however, as with reason he had feared, was not granted him by the unconscious object of his dread, who soon called on him for explanations of problems or principles, of which he knew about as much as the man in the moon; but of which he had unwisely determined to conceal his ignorance, lest it should be said in the district, that there were scholars in the school who knew more than their master. And having settled on this course, no other alternative now remained for him, but to meet these calls for instruction in the best way he could. And it would have been amusing enough to a spectator, in the secret, to have witnessed the various shifts to which the poor fellow was driven, to get along with his troublesome pupil, without exposing the ignorance which he was so anxious to conceal. At one time, when thus called on for instruction, he would pretend such a hurry, that he could not attend to the required explanation; at another, when apparently he was about to comply with the request of his pupil, he would suddenly discover some delinquency in the school, which he must immediately attend to, and which would be made to occupy his attention so long, that he would have barely time to hurry through the ordinary duties of school, before the established hour of closing. At another time, he would take the book, look over the difficult passage, and, handing it back to Locke with a knowing smile, advise him to try it again; he would soon see the only difficulty, and it would be better for him to discover it for himself. And at yet another, when hard pressed for assistance, he would read the problem in question several times, and after glancing at the context till he had got the run of the technical terms, proceed with a pretended explanation, for which neither himself, pupil, or any one else, could ever be any the wiser. From this unpleasant predicament, however, the thus sadly annoyed teacher was at length happily relieved. For Locke, finding himself unable to make any thing out of the man, even when he was successful enough to get him to look at his studies, came, after a while, to the conclusion to let him entirely alone, and depend only on himself for mastering the difficulties which he met in his progress. And, with his excellent self formed habits of thought -- that of patient investigation, and of thoroughly understanding every thing, as, step by step, he carefully advanced -- he found but little trouble in overcoming every obstacle that presented itself in his course onward. And if ever, as was rarely the case, he was compelled to pass over a difficulty unexplained, he never lost sight of it till it was conquered.
   There is nothing, perhaps, upon which the growth of intellect so much depends, as upon habits of thought; nothing which so clearly constitutes the great distinguishing difference, in the present, between a strong intellect and a feeble one; and nothing which so conclusively accounts for the beginning and constant increase of that difference in the past, as the opposite habits of thought that have been contracted in youth, or, at the latest, in the first years of manhood. A glance at the contrasted methods adopted and pursued by two individuals of the two different classes of thinkers to which we have alluded, will show the truth of this position; and, at the same time, explain the causes of their respective intellectual conditions. An individual of one of these classes begins, we will suppose, upon one of the rudiments of education. Before mastering the first elementary principle, he leaves, or is suffered to leave it, for the next. In coming upon this, he has not only to contend with the difficulties he left unmastered in the former lesson, but those likewise of the intrinsically worse one of the present. Both the temptation and excuse are now doubled for sliding superficially over this also. The third, in this way, is found still worse, and consequently is still more imperfectly mastered; and so on, in the particular branch on which he is engaged, or any other, probably, which he shall undertake to learn, to the end of the chapter; at which he will arrive little or none benefited by all that he has acquired. For the knowledge thus gained is imperfect and uncertain, and cannot be relied on as data for reasoning, but is constantly leading to false conclusions. And besides this, he has wholly failed of gaining one of the great objects of study -- mental discipline. He has contracted the habit of thinking superficially upon every thing. All his ideas become vague and confused; and all the operations of his mind, are, consequently, imbecile and unsafe, producing no fruits, or but the fruits of error. This intellectual condition, indeed, becomes one that would seem almost to justify the absurd, and without considerable qualification, the false assertion of Pope,

" A little learning is a dangerous thing."

   Now for an individual of the other class. Like the former, and with no other advantages, he commences the same rudiments. But, unlike the former, he is induced to make himself completely master of the first principle, and familiar with all its details, before proceeding any farther. This being accomplished, he thus becomes armed with power to encounter the next; which, in this way, he finds but little if any more difficult than the preceding; and which, when equally well perfected, gives him still additional strength to grapple with the third. And so he proceeds, or may proceed, through the whole circle of the sciences, carefully making his way, step by step, onward; never sliding over a difficulty, but often retracing his steps to return to the onset with improved means of overcoming the obstacle in his progress. In this way, as he advances in the path of acquirement, just so much certain knowledge he gains, to be stored away in the chambers of his mind for future appropriation, either to its direct uses, or to the purposes of induction, comparison, or other process of reasoning. In this way, also, his mind acquires method, clearness, and vigor; and he thus becomes enabled to think correctly and thoroughly, and arrive at safe conclusions on whatever subject is presented for his investigation. Now these two individuals will carry the different habits of thought, thus respectively formed by them, into the business and various concerns of life; and the results will there be equally visible, as in the walks of science. The one never thoroughly investigates any subject. His views, as before intimated, are all superficial; and his conclusions, consequently, as often as otherwise, are erroneous, leading him into false movements in business, if guided by his own mind, if not reducing him to a miserable dependence on the opinions of others, by whom he is liable to be equally misled. The other examines every subject presented for his consideration patiently, weighs it carefully, sees it in all its bearings clearly, and thus becomes prepared to decide with confidence and correctness. The one, in short, seeing only part of the bearings of the various questions which are constantly arising in life for his decision, makes bad bargains, or rejects good ones, rushes into uncertain speculations, lives in continued embarrassments and troubles, which he calls misfortunes, but which good habits of thought would have enabled him to avoid, and ends his career, most probably, in poverty and insignificance, or in sudden ruin and disgrace. The other, carrying along with him the means of avoiding the evil, which is brought upon its victim through the causes we have just named, and, at the same time, the means of grasping the good, which, through similar causes, is rejected, goes on increasing in competence, wisdom, and influence, moving quietly through life, and leaving, at his death, a useful example, and an honest fame behind him.
   Such are generally the results deducible from good and bad habits of thought; and yet who will say these habits, for good or for evil, are not usually formed through the care or negligence of teachers? Instructors of youth, where rests the responsibility?6
   But to return to our young hero. For the remainder of the winter school, though left, for the best of reasons, by the master, to work his way unassisted, he pressed forward steadily and rapidly in his chosen course of mathematics. And the school having at length been brought to a close, spring, summer, and autumn again succeeded but to find him, in every moment of his leisure, employed on his studies in the same manner, and with the same untiring perseverance, as in the preceding season. One incident, however, occurred this season to vary the monotony of his secluded life; while, at the same time, it became the means of affording him advantages in his studies, which he never before had been so fortunate as to receive. That was an accidental acquaintance he formed with an old, self-taught land-surveyor, who resided in a different part of the same town; and who, like himself, was a great lover of that strong, but healthy food of the mind -- the science of numbers and quantities. Locke and this man, by that sort of intellectual free-masonry which passes among sympathetic minds, were not long, when the opportunity occurred, in finding each other out, and forming a close intimacy. The surveyor, having studied much more than was immediately necessary for the exercise of his calling, and dipped considerably deep into principles, was able to explain to the former many knotty points which he had been puzzled to resolve, besides showing him the practical part of surveying, upon which, having gone through geometry and trigonometry, he had now commenced. Locke, in return, brought the other his books, which, to the extent of more than half of them, at least, he had never seen; and which, being loaned him, he fell to studying with boyish enthusiasm. No sooner was this singular companionship thus fairly established, than our boy-hero was found, every rainy day, and at other times when he had finished his tasks, during the summer and fall, posting off on foot to commune and practice with his gray-headed brother in science. And when met, the two might have been seen intently engaged in surveying fields, measuring heights and distances, or patiently plodding on together in navigation, which they soon jointly commenced.7
   This pleasing intercourse, however, was at length brought to a close by the stormy weather and bad travelling which immediately preceded the setting-in of winter. And Locke, bidding his old friend farewell, took home his books for the purpose of resuming his studies in the winter school, for the beginning of which the time had now arrived. But in this purpose he was for some time doomed to be disappointed. For, when the usual time for commencing the school came, it was found that no teacher had been engaged. The committee, up to this time, had been waiting for applications for the school, expecting that their only trouble, as usual, would be in deciding upon a selection of the various applicants. But it somehow had unaccountably happened, that not a single application had been made; and the committee were now consequently forced to bestir themselves in going out in search of a teacher. But in this, also, they were without success; for, though they found candidates for teaching in plenty, they could find no one, when they named their particular school, who made not some excuse for not undertaking to instruct it. This they thought very strange, as their school had ever been considered a very orderly one. But as strange and uncommon as the trouble was, they were compelled to yield to it, and reluctantly give up all thought of having a school that winter.
   Various were the conjectures formed in the district, by way of accounting for this unexpected failure. Some contended, that the school, after all, must be so unruly that no teacher would engage in it; others, that the masters had not been treated with sufficient attention by the inhabitants of the district; and yet others, that the schoolmasters had combined to strike for higher wages, and had come to the determination not to teach till the punished public should voluntarily come forward, and offer the secretly-fixed prices. Among all these, and other sage conjectures of the cause, however, no one had hit upon the truth. For the true secret of the misfortune at length leaked out; when the discovery was made, that Locke Amsden had, in fact, been the innocent and unconscious cause of the whole of it. He, it appeared, besides annoying his own teacher with questions too hard for him, had also been the means of a similar annoyance to many other teachers of the neighboring districts. He had been in the habit, the preceding winter, of frequently attending the evening spelling-schools, which it was customary for the instructors in that section of the country to appoint and hold at intervals, through the whole term of their engagements.8 And at each of these evening schools, which he thus went abroad to attend, he was sure to propose to one or two of the best scholars, for answer, some difficult point in grammar, some mathematical question of his own originating, or, as was more generally the case, such as he had met with in his studies, and was anxious to see explained. Nearly all these questions, as had been expected, and, indeed, commonly requested by the mover, were carried for solution to the master; who, too often, was compelled to resort to some pitiful evasion to hide his inability to furnish the required answer. And the same questions, also, besides being agitated in the schools into which they were first introduced, were often communicated to other schools, and thus became a source of trouble to other masters; so that, in this way, there was scarcely a teacher, anywhere in the vicinity, who had not experienced the inconvenience of Locke's scholarship and inquiring disposition; and most of them, though they prudently kept the fact to themselves, fairly wished him out of the country, and secretly resolved never to be caught engaging to instruct any school where he should be a pupil. It appeared, therefore, that the failure of the committee, before mentioned, was occasioned not by there being bad scholars in the school, but good ones; or rather one, whose aptitude and acquirements had made him so much the dread of the schoolmasters, with whom the country then happened to be favored, as effectually to keep them out of the district.
   The disappointment thus occasioned the district, however, as vexatious as it was to Locke at the time, was, like many other disappointments in life, of which we are wont to complain, destined, in a short time, to prove a blessing, not only to him, but to the whole school. For, in a few weeks, an unforeseen occurrence brought them an instructor well qualified for his task. This was a senior collegian, who had returned to spend his last vacation at his father's residence, in a neighboring town; and who, on accidentally learning that the district in question had been unable to supply themselves with a teacher, from the suspected causes we have named, was thereby induced to send them word he would come and instruct their school, if they would give him a dollar per day and board. To be sure, the very unusual price demanded by the young man, threatened, for some days, to prove an insurmountable obstacle to engaging him. The sum asked, contended the committee, was outrageous, unheard of, and it was out of all question that they should give it. But all the larger boys and girls clamored; Locke electioneered as if life and death hung on the event; and his mother, whose influence was generally felt in the neighborhood, when she chose to exert it, went round to see other mothers, who, being either convinced by her arguments in favor of the cause she had espoused, or tired of having their noisy children any longer at home, beset their husbands to beset the committee; and the result was, that the committee, unable to stem the current thus brought to bear against them, started off, and engaged the young gentleman, whose name was Seaver, at his own price. The next Monday morning, to the great joy of Locke, he appeared on the ground, and commenced the duties of his school.9
   We have said that Mr. Seaver, the instructor now employed, was well qualified for the task he had undertaken; and in so saying, we meant much more than what extensive attainments in science and literature, merely, would necessarily imply. He possessed science, indeed, to an eminent degree; but as is too rarely the case, especially with those fresh from the schools, he possessed it without any of that learned quackery of technical terms and unusual words, which is so often made to shut out knowledge from the common mind as effectually as the monastic walls of the dark ages. His language, indeed, on whatever subject employed, though the most abstruse to be found in the books, was as simple as that of childhood itself; while, at the same time, he had the happy faculty of putting the minds of all he addressed, even to the youngest and weakest, at once in the full possession of his ideas. This, with a good understanding of human nature, -- and of human nature, particularly, as developed in the philosophy of the young head and the young heart, to enable him to know how, when and where to interest, incite, check, and control, -- together with a temperament of his own, and a general discrimination to insure a judicious application of his other faculties, combined to make him that invaluable acquisition to society -- a good schoolmaster; one who, if adequately rewarded, would do his part in throwing the full light of science, within the gliding years of half a generation, over the mind of a nation.
   The instruction of a teacher of the character we have just described, was a new thing to Locke Amsden. And it is needless for us to say, perhaps, how the advantages thus furnished him were improved. The first week he spent in looking up, and obtaining from his teacher, explanations and illustrations of all the knotty points which he had left unmastered in his course of mathematics. When all these were clearly understood and familiarized to his mind, he commenced, in good earnest, his onward progress. Day and night, almost unceasingly, applying every energy of his mind, he soon finished what remained yet to be studied of the ordinary course of mathematics, and thence passed on into and through physics, or natural philosophy, astronomy, and even a considerable portion of fluxions, with a rapidity and comprehension of what he passed over, which perfectly astonished his instructor; who, unwilling to check him in a career where he was accomplishing so much which was important, and which is so often neglected after the pupil is put upon more seductive studies, had thus far suffered him to bestow nearly his undivided attention to the branches we have enumerated. But as the school drew to a close, that instructor began to direct the attention of his favorite scholar to studies which had never, or not so particularly, occupied his mind. After a course of delicate questioning, calculated, with one of his turn, to make him keenly feel his own ignorance, and, at the same time, to furnish incentives to action, the former opened to the wondering and longing view of the latter the necessity and advantage of exploring other departments in the wide field of learning. And, fired with new zeal at the prospect, our young aspirant, as he was thus made to see before him

"Alps on Alps arise,"

now became doubly ambitious to mount their glittering steeps. But the close of the school, which was now at hand, precluded all opportunity, for the present at least, of entering upon this glorious field of exertion; and, with peculiar regret and sorrow, he was compelled to bid adieu to his beloved instructor, relinquish study, and return to the labors of the farm.

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