Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Commands of Lieutenand- General Thomas J. Jackson

[16] requiring them to pursue their studies diligently at school. He soon wearied again of the restraint, and, taking his little brother, the next spring he went down the Ohio river, and disappeared from the knowledge of his friends for a time. In the fall of the year they returned, by the charity of some steamboat-master, travel-soiled, ragged, and emaciated by the ague. Their story was that they had floated down to the junction of the Ohio with the Father of Waters, seeking adventures and a livelihood, until at length they contracted to cut firewood for the furnaces of the steamers, on one of the lonely islands of the Mississippi, near the southwestern corner of Kentucky. Here the two children had spent the summer alone, living in a temporary cabin, earning their bread by this rough labor, amidst the dreary forests of cottonwood, and encircled by the turbid river; until their sufferings from the ague compelled them to seek a way homewards. How strange a world this for the fair and pensive child of nine summers! But such was the sturdiness of his nature, that he seemed scarcely to feel either its incongruity or its hardship. On their return to their native region, Thomas declared that he should go back permanently to the protection of his uncle Cummins Jackson, because he had experienced his kindness and loved his home. But Warren seemed still to feel some repugnance, and preferred to seek a refuge with one of his father's sisters, living near the old home of the family, on Buchanan river, Mrs. Isaac Brake. Here he was kindly received. The comforts of Thomas's home soon repaired the ravages of the ague in his body; but in Warren the disease had taken so fatal a hold that it could not be exorcised; it passed into a phase of pulmonary decline, and after a few years of lingering sickness, which seemed to be sanctified to the production of thorough gentleness and piety, it carried him to his grave in his nineteenth year. None of the little family now remained save