Part 1 (2/2)

There we have the clue to the history of the household of the Browns for the next two generations They FELL IN LOVE With the despised negro, and this glorious trait passed like an heritage froeneration

There is a letter extant which supplies us with the best information on John Brown's own boyhood It ritten for a lad in a wealthy home where he stayed in later days, who had asked him many questions about his experiences in early life He humorously calls it a 'short story of a certain boy of my acquaintance I will call John' A few extracts will reveal his character in the for Here, for instance, you may trace the conscientiousness (often morbid) which was so marked a feature in his later days 'I cannot tell you of anything in the first four years of John's life worth e he was teirl who lived in the family, and stole the a full day to think of the wrong, received frolect to tell you of a very foolish and bad habit to which John was soenerally to screen himself from blame or from punishment He could not well endure to be reproached, and now I think had he been oftener encouraged to be entirely frank, by MAKING FRANKNESS A KIND OF ATONEMENT for so with this mean habit'

A story is told of John's schooldays which is an a and quite characteristic instance of his ethical eccentricities For a short tiether, and Saluilty of some offence which was condoned by the ht have upon his brother's ht the lenient teacher and informed him that the fault was much deprecated by their father at hoation there would have been inevitable He therefore desired it should be duly inflicted, as otherwise he should feel co discipline was still lax, he proceeded with paternal soleed that this was done with reluctant fidelity!

Truly the moral instincts of the fah naturally self-conscious and shy, his precociousness in boyhood, bringing him into association, as it did, with ant er , a fault which he diligently sought to correct in later life At fifteen he had beco journeys with all the confidence of e The letter froes whichin the third person, he says, 'John had been taught from earliest childhood to fear God and keep His coh quite sceptical he had always by turns feltHe became to some extent a convert to Christianity, and ever after a firm believer in the divine authenticity of the Bible With this book he became very familiar, and possessed a most unusual memory of its entire contents'

Here are hints as to his early pursuits: 'After getting to Ohio in 1805, he was for some time rather afraid of the Indians and their rifles, but this soon wore off, and he used to hang about theood manners and learned a trifle of their talk His father learned to dress deer-skins, and at six years old John was installed a young Buck-skin He was, perhaps, rather observing, as he ever after re, so that he could at any time dress his own leather, such as squirrel, racoon, cat, wolf, and dog skins, and also learned to e at times, and was of considerable service in many ways He did not become much of a scholar He would always choose to stay at ho the warenerally be seen barefooted and bareheaded, with buck-skin breeches suspended often with one leather strap over his shoulder, but soh the wilderness alone to very considerable distances was particularly his delight; in this he was often indulged, so that by the time he elve years old he was sent off more than a hundred miles with companies of cattle He followed up with tenacity whatever he set about so long as it answered his general purpose, and thence he rarely failed in sos he undertook'

'Froood deal of anxiety to learn, but could only read and study a little, both for want of tied by the help of books, however, to make himself tolerably well acquainted with co, which he practised an early in life to discover a great liking to fine cattle, horses, sheep, and swine; and as soon as circuan to be a practical shepherd--it being a calling for which, in early life, he had a kind of enthusiastic longing, together with the idea that as a business it bade fair to afford him the means of CARRYING OUT HIS GREATEST OR PRINcipaL OBJECT'

Here we touch the keynote of this life ofdesire That PRINcipaL OBJECT filled his horizon even in childhood He loved to tell how, like his father before hied his whole strength to the chivalrous task of breaking his fetters It happened on this wise In those long journeys he was allowed to take, he was the 'business guest' of a slave-owner, as pleased with his resourcefulness at such an age He was the object of curious attention, and was treated as 'coro just his own age, and as intelligent as he Young John struck up an acquaintance with him, and could not fail to contrast the fashi+on in which he hi darkie was coarsely treated with scant fare and ill-housing His frequent thrashi+ngs see John's spirit as much as they did his flesh They were not always administered with the orthodox whip, but with a shovel or anything else that ca upon this contrast, and tells us how the iniquity of slavery was borne in upon his young heart, and he was drawn to this little coloured playmate, who had neither father nor mother known to him The Bible was the final court of appeal in the Brown family, and the verdict of that court was that they two--the slave and the guest--were brothers, so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty drew young John to 'swear eternal ith slavery' That vow, never recanted or forgotten, becaaries and reconciles what else were hopeless inconsistencies It was a devout obsession which made him a wanderer all his days, and in the end carried hireat call had come, and a child's voice had replied, 'Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth' And ears and heart tingled at es that seemed to come from the Unseen

CHAPTER III

THE LONG WAITING-TIME

For over thirty years did this man both 'hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord' to come for the slaves of his land The interval is full of interest for those who care to watch the development of a life-purpose Only for three, or four years was he destined to figure in the eyes of the world Those years, as we shall hereafter see, were croith events; but for a generation he felt an abiding conviction of i fateful about the constant indications of this spirit of readiness His coreatly successful At Hudson, Ohio, till 1825, and afterwards at Richmond, Pennsylvania, he was tanner, land-surveyor, and part of the time post, but is a typical Yankee in the facility hich he turns his hand to anything

From 1835 to 1839 he was at Franklin, Ohio, where we find hi of horses, and also dabbling in land speculation, with the result that he became bankrupt But when he failed in business he set to work to pay his debts in full His death found hiarded as while, endeavour, and even failure he was known as trusty and honourable

From 1841 to 1846 he lived at Richfield, Ohio, where he took to shepherding and wool-dealing, which he continued in 1849 at Springfield, Massachusetts He see When he caht to practise a fraudulent joke upon his quick fingers They stripped a poodle of the best of his fleece and handed it to the oracular Yankee with the inquiry, 'What would you do with that wool?' But there isdoer-ends, for he rolled it there, and in aretort, 'Gentle's hair I would advise you to put this into it'

Had he kno to sell wool as well as he kne to test it; had he kno to sell his sheep as well as he knew hundreds of sheep faces apart, and like a diviner could interpret their inarticulate language; had he been as apt upon the ht have h for the wants of a severely plain household life

But this business record was (and herefroely proceeded) in no wise the history of John Brown Weof his soul, and of the inward preparation for what he felt was his divine destiny; and these athered as atch the sie, while residing at Hudson, Ohio, he h he was but twenty years of age, his was no rash choice A description by one who had been brought up with her may be fitly quoted: 'Plain but attractive, because of a quiet a beautifully, almost always sacred music; she had a place in the wood not far froo alone to pray' John Brown, servant as he already accounted himself of the Invisible Powers, is drawn to one who thus communes with the Unseen

She will have syth when he may be absent from her in pursuit of them The sketch proceeds, 'She was pleasant but not funny; she never said what she did not mean' Here, truly, was the wife for a man in dead earnest and who could keep a boyish oath even unto death For twelve years she proved a good coe five survived, fro the do

The ho succeeded her (Mary Ann Day) seems to have been no less a help-meet in his enterprises Thirteen children,of this second e, so that in a hereditary sense the soul of John Brown may be said to have marched on

He infected all his children with his passionate love of liberty Many are his cares for their spiritual welfare Some of them sorely tried his patience by their aloofness from the Christian conventions that were dear to him; he yearns over their souls as he fears their experience of the inner working of grace is not as his own, but they swerved not in their allegiance to the cause of the slave Let us avail ourselves of some of their memories of their remarkable father

How early the house becaro we learn from the eldest son, who tells us he can just recollect a tiitive slave and his ere there, for they had heard that there were a couple residing in the house who loved the negro and would lend hi hand They were speedily ress, relieved of her last fear, takes young John in a motherly fashi+on upon her knee and kisses him He almost instinctively sca, he watches histhem supper Presently father's extraordinarily quick ear detects the sound of horsehoofs half a mile aeapons are thrust into the hands of the terrified pair, and they are taken out to the woody swa Father then returns, only to discover that it is a false alar them into shelter and warmth once more, and tells the assembled family on their arrival how he had difficulty in the dark in recognizing the hiding-place and really discovered thehtened hearts No wonder Quick as any faculty he had was that of hearing a slave's heart beat Had it not been for that keen instinct there would have been no tale to tell of John Brown

The daughter says her earliestto her his favourite hyladly solemn sound: Let all the nations know To earth's remotest bound

The year of Jubilee is co, he would tell her with heart bri with tenderness of poor little black children ere slaves What were slaves? she wanted to know And he was ready enough to tell her of those ere riven from father and mother and sold for base coin, whoal to teach their A B C, but quite lawful to flog; and then the daughter would be asked, by way of application to hisdiscourse, if she would like some of them to come some time and share her ho family there was unfolded the horror of the slavery system That horror had faded in the minds of many in the Northern States whose ancestry had held freedom dear; while in the Southern States, for the most part, the possession of your fellow creatures as if they were so much farm stock had become too familiar a feature of co, much less shame The enormous additions to the cotton trade had ainful, and the capital invested in this living property was i of slaves for the ht wealth to many, and fierce was the resentment when any one publicly criticized the institution There was by no roes; a kind of patriarchal tenderness towards theood foroods and chattels, with no civil rights worth --for laws in their defence were practically worthless, seeing they could not appear as witnesses in the court Public whipping-houses were provided for the expeditious correction of the refractory, and a al justification for the use of the branding-irons upon their flesh If they did contrive to escape there were dogs bred on purpose to hunt theht be slain, and the laould not graze the ht be wrenched fro to the state of the est of all to our ears, the pulpits of the South extolled slavery as appointed of Heaven, and sole the prophecy that Ham should be the servant of his brethren, the pulpiteer would ask ould dare to resist the will of God Most High? Not content to hold their views tenaciously, the slave-holders and their followers dealt out threatenings and slaughter to all who by lip or pen opposed thereat natural right of freedo, or, it ht to repeat their father's vow It was in 1839, when they were living at Franklin, Ohio, that he called them around him, and on bended knee declared the secret ed hiht offer, for the overthrow of slavery, which he believed to be the very citadel of evil in America

'Swear, children, swear,' said he; and fro house there went up an appeal for a blessing upon their oath--an oath which they could truly protest was likely to bring nought to them but peril, disaster, and, perchance, death, but which they ell assured istered in heaven