- end_line
- 12380
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12341
- text
- on whom had now descended the maintenance of his mother and sisters.
But, though the son of a farmer, Charles was peculiarly averse to hard
labor. It was not impossible that by resolute hard labor he might
eventually have succeeded in placing his family in a far more
comfortable situation than he had ever remembered them. But it was not
so fated; the benevolent State had in its great wisdom decreed
otherwise.
In the village of Saddle Meadows there was an institution, half
common-school and half academy, but mainly supported by a general
ordinance and financial provision of the government Here, not only were
the rudiments of an English education taught, but likewise some touch of
belles lettres, and composition, and that great American bulwark and
bore--elocution. On the high-raised, stage platform of the Saddle
Meadows Academy, the sons of the most indigent day-laborers were wont to
drawl out the fiery revolutionary rhetoric of Patrick Henry, or
gesticulate impetuously through the soft cadences of Drake's "Culprit
Fay." What wonder, then, that of Saturdays, when there was no elocution
and poesy, these boys should grow melancholy and disdainful over the
heavy, plodding handles of dung-forks and hoes?
At the age of fifteen, the ambition of Charles Millthorpe was to be
either an orator, or a poet; at any rate, a great genius of one sort or
other. He recalled the ancestral Knight, and indignantly spurned the
plow. Detecting in him the first germ of this inclination, old
Millthorpe had very seriously reasoned with his son; warning him against
the evils of his vagrant ambition. Ambition of that sort was either for
undoubted genius, rich boys, or poor boys, standing entirely alone in
the world, with no one relying upon them. Charles had better consider
the case; his father was old and infirm; he could not last very long; he
had nothing to leave behind him but his plow and his hoe; his mother was
sickly; his sisters pale and delicate; and finally, life was a fact, and
the winters in that part of the country exceedingly bitter and long.
Seven months out of the twelve the pastures bore nothing, and all cattle
must be fed in the barns. But Charles was a boy; advice often seems the
most wantonly wasted of all human breath; man will not take wisdom on
trust; may be, it is well; for such wisdom is worthless; we must find
the true gem for ourselves; and so we go groping and groping for many
and many a day.
- title
- Chunk 4