Once, with a playmate, he swam across the river to 'Great Rock,' a
distance of three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against the
tide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life by breaking through
the ice on the river and reached the shore only after a desperate
struggle, the ice yielding as often as he attempted to climb upon its
surface. It was favorite pastime of the boys of that day to swim from
one wharf to another adjacent, where vessels from the West Indies
discharged their freight of molasses, and there to indulge in stolen
sweetness, extracted by a smooth stick inserted through the bung-hole.
When detected and chased, they would plunge into the water and escape to
the wharf on which they had left their clothes." Such was the little man
with a boy's irrepressible passion for frolic and fun. His passion for
music was hardly less pronounced, and this he inherited from his mother,
and exercised to his heart's content in the choir of the Baptist Church.
These were the bright lines and spots in his strenuous young life. He
played and sang the gathering brood of cares out of his own and his
mother's heart. He needed to play and he needed to sing to charm away
from his spirit the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever over
his childhood. It was able to do many hard things to him, break up his
home, sunder him from his mother, force him at a tender age to earn his
bread, still there was another bird in the boy's heart, which sang out
of it the shadow and into it the sunshine.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25