The Reminiscences of an Astronomer | Page 6

truth. I never knew you to deviate from it in one single instance, either in infancy or youth.
From your infancy you showed great physical courage in going along the woods or in places in the dark among cattle, and I am surprised at what you say about your fears of a stove-pipe and trees.
Perhaps I should have said "mental" instead of physical courage, for in one respect you were uncommonly deficient in that sort of courage necessary to perform bodily labor. Until nine or ten years of age you made a most pitiful attempt at any sort of bodily or rather "handy" work.
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An extraordinary peculiarity in you was never to leap past a word you could not make out. I certainly never gave you any particular instructions about this, or the fact itself would not at the time have appeared so strange to me. I will name one case. After a return to Wallace (you were eleven) I, one day, on going from home for an hour or so, gave you a borrowed newspaper, telling you there was a fine piece; to read it, and tell me its contents when I returned. On my return you were near the house chopping wood. "Well, Simon, did you read the piece?" "No, sir." "Why not?" "I came to a word I did not know." This word was just about four lines from the commencement.
At thirteen you read Phrenology. I now often impressed upon you the necessity of bodily labor; that you might attain a strong and healthy physical system, so as to be able to stand long hours of study when you came to manhood, for it was evident to me that you would not labor with the hands for a business. On this account, as much as on account of poverty, I hired you out for a large portion of the three years that we lived at Clements.
At fifteen you studied Euclid, and were enraptured with it. It is a little singular that all this time you never showed any self-esteem; or spoke of getting into employment at some future day, among the learned. The pleasure of intellectual exercise in demonstrating or analyzing a geometrical problem, or solving an algebraic equation, seemed to be your only object. No Junior, Seignour or Sophomore class, with annual honors, was ever, I suppose, presented to your mind.
Your almost intuitive knowledge of geography, navigation, and nautical matters in general caused me to think most ardently of writing to the Admiral at Halifax, to know if he would give you a place among the midshipmen of the navy; but my hope of seeing you a leading lawyer, and finally a judge on the bench, together with the possibility that your mother would not consent, and the possibility that you would not wish to go, deterred me: although I think I commenced a letter.
Among the books which profoundly influenced my mode of life and thought during the period embraced in the foregoing extracts were Fowler's "Phrenology" and Combe's "Constitution of Man." It may appear strange to the reader if a system so completely exploded as that of phrenology should have any value as a mental discipline. Its real value consisted, not in what it taught about the position of the "organs," but in presenting a study of human nature which, if not scientific in form, was truly so in spirit. I acquired the habit of looking on the characters and capabilities of men as the result of their organism. A hot and impulsive temper was checked by the reflection that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to allow a rush of blood to the organs of "combativeness" and "destructiveness" to upset one's mental equilibrium.
That I have gotten along in life almost without making (so far as I am aware) a personal enemy may be attributed to this early discipline, which led me into the habit of dealing with antagonism and personal opposition as I would deal with any physical opposition--evade it, avoid it, or overcome it. It goes without saying, however, that no discipline of this sort will avail to keep the passions of a youth always in check, and my own were no exception. When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck. He escaped with a couple of severe though not serious cuts in his hand. He announced his intention of thrashing me when we should meet again; so for several days thereafter I tried, so far as possible, in going afield to keep a pitchfork within reach, determined that if he tried the job and I failed to kill