that
direction. I had my two grammars literally by heart, notes and all.
Then we revised as thoroughly as possible, reading everything anew,
and leaving no passage unexplained. I learned to scan, too, a fact
that was sufficient to make a reputation for a scholar, in America,
half a century since.
[1]
After this, we turned our attention to
mathematics, a science Mr. Hardinge rightly enough thought there was
no danger of my acquiring too thoroughly. We mastered arithmetic, of
which I had a good deal of previous knowledge, in a few weeks, and
then I went through trigonometry, with some of the more useful
problems in geometry. This was the point at which I had arrived when
my mother's death occurred.
As for myself, I frankly admit a strong disinclination to be
learned. The law I might be forced to study, but practising it was a
thing my mind had long been made up never to do. There was a small
vein of obstinacy in my disposition that would have been very likely
to carry me through in such a determination, even had my mother lived,
though deference to her wishes would certainly have carried me as far
as the license. Even now she was no more, I was anxious to ascertain
whether she had left any directions or requests on the subject, either
of which would have been laws to me. I talked with Rupert on this
matter, and was a little shocked with the levity with which he treated
it. "What difference can it make to your parents,
now
," he
said, with an emphasis that grated on my nerves, "whether you become a
lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, or stay here on your farm, and be
a farmer, like your father?"
"My father had been a sailor," I answered, quick as lightning.
"True; and a noble, manly, gentleman-like calling it is! I never see
a sailor that I do not envy him his advantages. Why, Miles, neither
of us has ever been in town even, while your mother's boatmen, or your
own, as they are now, go there regularly once a-week. I would give the
world to be a sailor."
"You, Rupert! Why, you know that your father in tends, or, rather,
wishes that you should become a clergyman."
"A pretty appearance a young man of my figure would make in the
pulpit, Miles, or wearing a surplice. No, no; there have been two
Hardinges in the church in this century, and I have a fancy also to
the sea. I suppose you know that my great-grandfather was a captain in
the navy, and
he
brought
his
son up a parson; now, turn
about is fair play, and the parson ought to give a son back to a
man-of-war. I've been reading the lives of naval men, and it's
surprising how many clergymen's sons, in England, go into the navy,
and how many sailors' sons get to be priests."
"But there is no navy in this country now—not even a single
ship-of-war, I believe."
"That is the worst of it. Congress
did
pass a law, two or three
years since, to build some frigates, but they have never been
launched. Now Washington has gone out of office, I suppose we shall
never have anything good in the country."
I revered the name of Washington, in common with the whole country,
but I did not see the
sequitur
. Rupert, however, cared little
for logical inferences, usually asserting such things as he wished,
and wishing such as he asserted. After a short pause, he continued the
discourse.
"You are now substantially your own master," he said, "and can do as
you please. Should you go to sea and not like it, you have only to
come back to this place, where you will be just as much the master as
if you had remained here superintending cattle, cutting hay, and
fattening pork, the whole time."
"I am not my own master, Rupert, any more than you are yourself. I am
your father's ward, and must so remain for more than five years to
come. I am just as much under his control as you, yourself."
Rupert laughed at this, and tried to persuade me it would be a good
thing to relieve his worthy fether of all responsibility in the
affair, if I had seriously determined never to go to Yale, or to be a
lawyer, by going