Chap. Xxxvii} June 15. |
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that few equalled him in strength of arm or power of
endurance.
His complexion was florid; his hair dark brown; his head in its shape perfectly round.
His broad nostrils seemed formed to give expression and escape to scornful anger.
His dark blue eyes, which were deeply set, had an expression of resignation, and an earnestness that was almost sadness.
At eleven years old, left an orphan to the care of an excellent but unlettered mother, he grew up without learning.
Of arithmetic and geometry he acquired just knowledge enough to be able to practise measuring land; but all his instruction at school taught him not so much as the orthography or rules of grammar of his own tongue.
His culture was altogether his own work, and he was in the strictest sense a self-made man; yet from his early life he never seemed uneducated.
At sixteen he went into the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years continued the pursuit, where the forests trained him, in meditative solitude, to freedom and largeness of mind; and nature revealed to him her obedience to serene and silent laws.
In his intervals from toil, he seemed always to be attracted to the best men, and to be cherished by them.
Fairfax, his employer, an Oxford scholar, already aged, became his fast friend.
He read little, but with close attention.
Whatever he took in hand, he applied himself to with care; and his papers, which have been preserved, show how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of writing correctly; always expressing himself with clearness and directness, often with felicity of language and grace.
When the frontiers on the west became disturbed,
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