Israel Potter | Page 4

How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his father's stray cattle among these
New England hills he himself like a beast should be hunted through half of Old England,
as a runaway rebel. Or, how could he ever have dreamed, when involved in the autumnal
vapors of these mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him three thousand miles
across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal-foes of London. But so it was destined to be.
This little boy of the hills, born in sight of the sparkling Housatonic, was to linger out the
best part of his life a prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.

CHAPTER II
.
THE YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES OF ISRAEL.
Imagination will easily picture the rural day of the youth of Israel. Let us pass on to a less
immature period.
It appears that he began his wanderings very early; moreover, that ere, on just principles
throwing off the yoke off his king, Israel, on equally excusable grounds, emancipated
himself from his sire. He continued in the enjoyment of parental love till the age of
eighteen, when, having formed an attachment for a neighbor's daughter--for some reason,
not deemed a suitable match by his father--he was severely reprimanded, warned to
discontinue his visits, and threatened with some disgraceful punishment in case he
persisted. As the girl was not only beautiful, but amiable--though, as will be seen, rather
weak--and her family as respectable as any, though unfortunately but poor, Israel deemed
his father's conduct unreasonable and oppressive; particularly as it turned out that he had
taken secret means to thwart his son with the girl's connections, if not with the girl herself,
so as to place almost insurmountable obstacles to an eventual marriage. For it had not
been the purpose of Israel to marry at once, but at a future day, when prudence should
approve the step. So, oppressed by his father, and bitterly disappointed in his love, the
desperate boy formed the determination to quit them both for another home and other
friends.
It was on Sunday, while the family were gone to a farmhouse church near by, that he
packed up as much of his clothing as might be contained in a handkerchief, which, with a
small quantity of provision, he hid in a piece of woods in the rear of the house. He then
returned, and continued in the house till about nine in the evening, when, pretending to go

to bed, he passed out of a back door, and hastened to the woods for his bundle.
It was a sultry night in July; and that he might travel with the more ease on the
succeeding day, he lay down at the foot of a pine tree, reposing himself till an hour before
dawn, when, upon awaking, he heard the soft, prophetic sighing of the pine, stirred by the
first breath of the morning. Like the leaflets of that evergreen, all the fibres of his heart
trembled within him; tears fell from his eyes. But he thought of the tyranny of his father,
and what seemed to him the faithlessness of his love; and shouldering his bundle, arose,
and marched on.
His intention was to reach the new countries to the northward and westward, lying
between the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, and the Yankee settlements on the
Housatonic. This was mainly to elude all search. For the same reason, for the first ten or
twelve miles, shunning the public roads, he travelled through the woods; for he knew that
he would soon be missed and pursued.
He reached his destination in safety; hired out to a farmer for a month through the harvest;
then crossed from the Hudson to the Connecticut. Meeting here with an adventurer to the
unknown regions lying about the head waters of the latter river, he ascended with this
man in a canoe, paddling and pulling for many miles. Here again he hired himself out for
three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two hundred acres of land
lying in New Hampshire. The cheapness of the land was not alone owing to the newness
of the country, but to the perils investing it. Not only was it a wilderness abounding with
wild beasts, but the widely-scattered inhabitants were in continual dread of being, at
some unguarded moment, destroyed or made captive by the Canadian savages, who, ever
since the French war, had improved every opportunity to make forays across the
defenceless frontier.
His employer proving false to his contract in the matter of the land, and there being no
law in the country to force him to fulfil it, Israel--who, however brave-hearted, and even
much of a dare-devil upon a pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout