Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

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ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
New York, hearing of the misfortune of the Watkins children
and the desire of the younger son for knowledge, sent a box of
school-books which had belonged to an only son who had died
while prosecuting his studies. Among these books were the
long-desired classics, and our father's aspiration was the keener
now that these were in his hands at last; but who would be his
teacher in the wilderness? He, too, would have to come, like
the wise men of olden time, "from the East!" It was indeed
a wonderful providence that, with the jeweler's magnifying
lens and the box of school-books, came shortly the young
teacher before mentioned who taught the subscription school.
It took the greatest persistence and patience to master the
fundamentals of Latin and Greek by moving over the page a
magnifying glass which often covered not even one entire word
of the text. In this exertion our father persevered in his boyhood.
Long years after, he wrote a granddaughter at the beginning
of her language course: " Firi Romce was the second
book in my Latin course; the first was Historia Sacra. I read
these through every word; then Caesar. I read the whole of
the Gallic War and one book of the De Bello Civili; then all of
Virgil and about half the orations of Cicero. These were my
school-books, though I read them mostly at home. Harkness'
first lessons in Greek are much better than anything I had to
begin with." From this one list we know that our father pursued
his studies untiringly, which delighted his new preceptor,
who saw in him a coming linguist. His fine memory, his power
to retain as well as to select the best, possessed him of a wide
range of knowledge. He delighted in both ancient and modern
history, though all his life Greek was his favorite study; for he
not only enjoyed the study of language, but this one helped
him in his devoted researches in the Bible. If it had not been
for the Bible and the English Reader there would have been
no real literature in the ordinary home of that period. The
library of many a frontier household consisted in the almanacs,
which were preserved from year to year, being sewed together
and hung on a nail under the mantelpiece.
Perhaps I should have stated that among the treasures in