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

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, tried to imitate it. His character I do not think was a very well disciplined one at that time; he was, I believe, "a good hater," a dangerous