Captain Sam | Page 7

become
soldiers, a thing that nobody had ever thought of before.
The boys in the southwest were strong, hearty fellows, used to the woods, accustomed to
hardship and not afraid of danger. Many of them had fought bravely during the Indian
war, and when Jackson called for volunteers, a good many of these boys joined him,
some of them being mere lads just turning into their teens.

Sam Hardwicke, was noted all through that country for several reasons. In the first place
he was a boy of very fine appearance and unusual skill in all the things which help to
make either a boy or a man popular in a new country. He was a capital shot with rifle or
shot-gun; he was a superb horseman, a tireless walker, and an expert in all the arts of the
hunter.
He was strong and active of body, and better still he was a boy of better intellect and
better education than was common in that country at that early day when there were few
schools and poor ones. His father was a gentleman of wealth and education, who had
removed to Alabama for the sake of his health a few years before, bringing a large library
with him, and he had educated his children very carefully, acting as their teacher himself.
Sam was ready for college, and but for Jackson's call for troops he would have been on
his way to Virginia, to attend the old William and Mary University there, at the time our
story begins. When it became known, however, that men were needed to defend the
country against the British, Sam thought it his duty to help, and reluctantly resolved to
postpone the beginning of his college course for another year.
All these things made Sam Hardwicke a special favorite, and persons a great deal older
than he was, held him in very high regard, on account of his superior education, but more
particularly on account of the real superiority which was the result of that education; and
I want to say, right here, that the difference between a man or boy whose education has
been good and one who has had very little instruction, is a good deal greater than many
persons think. It is a mistake to suppose that the difference lies only in what one has
learned and the other has not. What you learn in school is the smallest part of the good
you get there. Half of it is usually worthless as information, and much of it is sure to be
forgotten; but the work of learning it is not thrown away on that account. In learning it
you train and discipline and cultivate your mind, making it grow both in strength and in
capacity, and so the educated man has really a stronger and better intellect than he ever
would have had without education. Many persons suppose,--and I have known even
college professors who made the mistake,--that a boy's mind is like a meal-bag, which
will hold just so much and needs filling. They fill it as they would fill the meal-bag, for
the sake of the meal and without a thought of the bag. In fact a boy's mind is more like
the boy himself. It will not do to try to make a man out of him by stuffing meat and bread
down his throat. The meat and bread fill him very quickly, but he isn't fully-grown when
he is full. To make a man of him we must give him food in proper quantities, and let it
help him to grow, and the things you learn in school are chiefly valuable as food for the
mind. Education makes the intellect grow as truly as food makes the body do so; and so I
say that Sam Hardwicke's superiority in intellect to the boys and even to most of the men
about him, consisted of something more than merely a larger stock of information. He
was intellectually larger than they, and if any boy who reads this book supposes that a
well-trained intellect is of no account in the practical affairs of life, it is time for him to
begin correcting some very dangerous notions.
To get back to the story, I must stop moralizing and say that when Sam made up his mind
to volunteer, a number of boys in the neighborhood determined to follow his example,
and, as Sam has already explained, the little company was organized, under Sam's
command as captain. Of course Sam had no real military authority, and he did not for a

moment suppose that his little band of boys would be recognized as a company or he as a
captain, on their arrival at Camp Jackson; but they had agreed to march under Sam's
command,