John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[3] #earlier years settlement in the country. The mother died, leaving four young children, Charles Anderson nine, Junius seven, Maria three years of age, and David a babe in arms. This loss made it necessary for the family to return to the home of Ann Denison's father near Guildhall in northeastern Vermont. Here the children were divided. Charles went to his uncle David Denison, who lived on a farm in the Connecticut River valley, while his brother and sister remained with their grandfather near by.

The life was a healthful one, and Charles, being from the first an unusually bright boy, was sent to the neighborhood school which, as was then customary, was kept open during the winter months only. Fortunately the teacher was an undergraduate of a New England college, who was not only competent but took an interest in his work. Charles naturally made rapid progress, and by the time he was ten years of age had become so proficient in most of his English studies that he was classed with boys as much as six and eight years his senior. Early after becoming a member of his uncle's family, he came into possession of a Latin grammar, and at once began the study of Latin. Whether this merely stimulated his natural aptitude, or developed an inherited but latent instinct for language, must necessarily remain a matter of speculation; but it is certain that from that time forward this New England lad, with but a slight strain of Continental blood in his veins, showed an extraordinary capacity for the acquisition of foreign tongues and the study of both ancient and modern literature.

By the time he had fairly entered his twelfth year, it was supposed that he had acquired sufficient education, especially in reading, writing, and arithmetic, to earn his own living, and accordingly, with the consent of his uncle and grandfather, he was sent to Buffalo, where he arrived greatly exhausted from the long and tiresome journey by