Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[46] God's hands; that if He willed my destruction by it, it was not to be evaded or shunned, and, therefore, was not to be dreaded. When the evenings were dark, her labors with her needle began earlier.

In the following winter, my mother and my uncle provided a home for me in Deerfield, with Aunt Polly Dame,--no relative of mine save that she was aunt to all the world. She was a good old lady taken care of by her daughter, and sat in the corner spinning flax on what was called “the little wheel,” to distinguish it from the “great wheel” on which wool was spun.

I went to school, and I think was liked by my teacher, for I was not a troublesome scholar, except in the way of asking very many questions, and of seeking explanations about matters which I was not infrequently told did not concern me. The school at Deerfield Parade lasted longer than that at Nottingham. I remained during the summer term, reading everything I could find, almost committing to memory the almanac, and vexing everybody who came into the house for explanations regarding the signs of the zodiac. Upon this last matter I could get no further information, the usual answer being that it did not concern me. But this did not prevent my asking the next person that I thought could tell me. I appropriated the full astronomy of the almanac, and profited much by it.

In the winter of my sixth year, I walked from my home every morning down to Nottingham Square to school, carrying my dinner in a little package. Provision had been made, that if it became stormy, I was to be taken into the tavern near the schoolhouse, and there kept until the weather cleared and the roads were again passable,--which they sometimes were not for three or four days. I then learned that there was a small town library there, and of all things that a boy of that age should read, I was allowed to take from the library Rollin's Ancient History,--and I read it.

I had not the slightest knowledge of chronology, and I thought the events in the history followed one after another in point of time,--the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, according to the chapters. But when they began fighting with each other, I got mixed up, because, according to my understanding, the first of these ought to have passed away when the others came on the scene. My reading did not interfere with my school lessons, which I pursued with a great deal of eagerness and pleasure, and also with