Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. | Page 7

frequent composition and declamation, we were prepared, at the end of
it, for the most thorough and minute examination in grammar, in Blair's
Rhetoric, in the two large octavo volumes of Morse's Geography, every
fact committed to memory, every name of country, city, mountain,
river, every boundary, population, length, breadth, degree of
latitude,--and we could repeat, word for word, the Constitution of the
United States. The consequence was, that we dropped all that load of
knowledge, or rather burden upon the memory, at the very threshold of
the school. Grammar I did study to some purpose that year, though
never before. I lost two years of my childhood, I think, upon that study,
absurdly [27] regarded as teaching children to speak the English
language, instead of being considered as what it properly is, the
philosophy of language, a science altogether beyond the reach of
childhood.
Of the persons and circumstances that influenced my culture and
character in youth, there are some that stand out very prominently in
my recollection, and require mention in this account of myself.
My father, first of all, did all that he could for me. He sent me to
college when he could ill afford it. But, what was more important as an
influence, all along from my childhood it was evidently his highest
desire and ambition for me that I should succeed in some professional
career, I think that of a lawyer. I was fond of reading,--indeed, spent
most of the evenings of my boyhood in that way,--and I soon observed
that he was disposed to indulge me in my favorite pursuit. He would
often send out my brothers, instead of me, upon errands or chores, "to
save me from interruption." What he admired most, was eloquence; and
I think he did more than Cicero's De Oratore to inspire me with a
similar feeling. I well remember his having been to Albany once, and
having heard Hamilton, and the unbounded admiration with which he
spoke of him. I was but ten years old when Hamilton was stricken

down; yet such was my interest in [28] him, and such my grief, that my
schoolmates asked me, "What is the matter?" I said, "General Hamilton
is dead." "But what is it? Who is it?" they asked. I replied that he was a
great orator; but I believe that it was to them much as if I had said that
the elephant in a menagerie had been killed. This early enthusiasm I
owed to my father. It influenced all my after thoughts and aims, and
was an impulse, though it may have borne but little appropriate fruit.
For books to read, the old Sheffield Library was my main resource. It
consisted of about two hundred volumes,--books of the good old
fashion, well printed, well bound in calf, and well thumbed too. What a
treasure was there for me! I thought the mine could never be exhausted.
At least, it contained all that I wanted then, and better reading, I think,
than that which generally engages our youth nowadays,--the great
English classics in prose and verse, Addison and Johnson and Milton
and Shakespeare, histories, travels, and a few novels. The most of these
books I read, some of them over and over, often by torchlight, sitting
on the floor (for we had a rich bed of old pine-knots on the farm); and
to this library I owe more than to anything that helped me in my
boyhood. Why is it that all its volumes are scattered now? What is it
that is coming over our New England villages, that looks like
deterioration and running down? Is our life going out of us to enrich the
great West? [29]I remember the time when there were eminent men in
Sheffield. Judge Sedgwick commenced the practice of the law here;
and there were Esquire Lee, and John W. Hurlbut, and later, Charles
Dewey, and a number of professional men besides, and several others
who were not professional, but readers, and could quote Johnson and
Pope and Shakespeare; my father himself could repeat the "Essay on
Man," and whole books of the "Paradise Lost."
My model man was Charles Dewey, ten or twelve years older than
myself. What attracted me to him was a singular union of strength and
tenderness. Not that the last was readily or easily to be seen. There was
not a bit of sunshine in it,--no commonplace amiableness. He wore no
smiles upon his face. His complexion, his brow, were dark; his person,
tall and spare; his bow had no suppleness in it, it even lacked
something of graceful courtesy, rather stiff and stately; his walk was a

kind of stride, very lofty, and did not say "By your leave," to the world.
I remember that I very absurdly, though unconsciously,