THE LETTER TO MASTER HENRY L. STEARNS

“My dear Young Friend:—I had not forgotten my promise to write you; but my constant care and anxiety have obliged me to put it off a long time. I do not flatter myself I can write anything that will very much interest you; but have concluded to send you a short story of a certain boy of my acquaintance; and for convenience and shortness of name, I will call him John.

“This story will be mainly a narration of follies and errors, which I hope you may avoid; but there is one thing connected with it, which will be calculated to encourage any young person to persevering effort, and that is the degree of success in accomplishing his objects which to a great extent marked the course of this boy throughout my entire acquaintance with him; notwithstanding his moderate capacity, and still more moderate acquirements.

“John was born May 9, 1800, at Torrington, Connecticut; of poor and hard-working parents; a descendant on the side of his father of one of the company of the Mayflower who landed at Plymouth, 1620. His mother was descended from a man who came at an early period to New England from Amsterdam, in Holland. Both his father’s and his mother’s fathers served in the war of the revolution; his father’s father died in a barn at New York while in the service, in 1776.

“I cannot tell you of anything in the first four years of John’s life worth mentioning save that at an early age he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging to a girl who lived in the family; and stole them. In this he was detected by his mother; and after having a full day to think of the wrong, received from her a thorough whipping.

“When he was five years old his father moved to Ohio, then a wilderness filled with wild beasts and Indians. During the long journey which was performed in part or mostly with an ox-team, he was called on by turns to assist a boy five years older, and learned to think he could accomplish smart things in driving the cows and riding the horses. Sometimes he met with rattlesnakes which were very large, and which some of the company generally managed to kill.

“After getting to Ohio he was for some time rather afraid of the Indians, and of their rifles; but this soon wore off, and he used to hang about them quite as much as was consistent with good manners, and learned a trifle of their talk. His father at this time learned to dress deer skin, and John, who was perhaps rather observing, ever after remembered the entire process of deer skin dressing, so that he could at any time dress his own leather such as squirrel, raccoon, cat, wolf or dog skins; and also he learned to make whip lashes, which brought him in some change at various times, and was useful in many ways.

“At six years old John began to be quite a rambler in the new wild country, finding birds and squirrels, and sometimes a wild turkey’s nest. Once a poor Indian boy gave him a yellow marble, the first he had ever seen. This he thought a good deal of, and kept it a good while; but at last he lost it one day. It took years to heal the wound, and I think he cried at times about it. About five months after this he caught a young squirrel, tearing off its tail in doing it; and getting severely bitten at the same time himself. He however held on to the little bob-tailed squirrel and finally got him perfectly tamed, so that he almost idolized his pet. This, too, he lost, by its wandering away; and for a year or two John was in mourning; and looking at all the squirrels he could see to try and discover Bobtail, if possible. He had also at one time become the owner of a little ewe lamb which did finely until it was about two-thirds grown, when it sickened and died. This brought another protracted mourning season; not that he felt the pecuniary loss so heavily, for that was never his disposition; but so strong and earnest were his attachments. It was a school of adversity for John; you may laugh at all this, but they were sore trials to him.

“John was never quarrelsome; but was excessively fond of the roughest and hardest kind of play; and could never get enough of it. He would always choose to stay at home and work hard, rather than go to school. To be sent off alone through the wilderness to very considerable distances was particularly his delight; and in this he was often indulged; so that by the time he was twelve years old he was sent off more than a hundred miles with companies of cattle; and he would have thought his character much injured had he been obliged to be helped in such a job. This was a boyish feeling, but characteristic, nevertheless.

“When the war broke out with England in 1812 his father soon commenced furnishing the troops with beef cattle, the collection and driving of which afforded John some opportunity for the chase, on foot, of wild steers and other cattle through the woods. During this war he had some chance to form his own boyish judgment of men and measures; and the effect of what he saw was to so far disgust him with military affairs that he would neither train nor drill, but got off by paying fines; and got along like a Quaker until his age had finally cleared him of military duty.

“During the war with England a circumstance occurred that in the end made him a most determined Abolitionist and led him to swear eternal war with slavery. John was stopping for a short time with a very gentlemanly landlord, since made a United States Marshal. This man owned a slave boy near John’s age, a boy very active, intelligent and full of good feeling to whom John was under considerable obligation for numerous little acts of kindness.

“The Master made a great pet of John; brought him to table with his finest company and friends and called their attention to every little smart thing he said or did, and to the fact of his being more than a hundred miles from home with a company of cattle alone; while the Negro boy (who was fully if not more than his equal) was badly clothed, poorly fed and lodged in cold weather, and beaten before John’s eyes with iron shovels or any other thing that came first to hand.

“This brought John to reflect on the wretched, hopeless condition of fatherless and motherless slave children; for such children have neither fathers or mothers to protect and provide for them.

“He sometimes would raise the question in his mind: Is God, then, their father?”