us.

Doctor Small encouraged the young farmer from the hills to think and to
express himself. He did not endeavor to set him straight or explain
everything for him, or correct all his vagaries, or demand that he should
memorize rules. He gave his affectionate sympathy to the boy who, with a
sort of feminine tenderness, clung to the only person who understood him.

To Doctor Small, pedigree and history unknown, let us give the credit of
being first in the list of friends that gave bent to the mind of
Jefferson. John Burke, in his "History of Virginia," refers to Professor
Small thus: "He was not any too orthodox in his opinions." And here we
catch a glimpse of a formative influence in the life of Jefferson that
caused him to turn from the letter of the law and cleave to the spirit
that maketh alive. After school-hours the tutor and the student walked and
talked, and on Saturdays and Sundays went on excursions through the woods;
and to the youth there was given an impulse for a scientific knowledge of
birds and flowers and the host of life that thronged the forest. And when
the pair had strayed so far beyond the town that darkness gathered and the
stars came out, they conversed of the wonders of the sky.

The true scientist has no passion for killing things. He says with
Thoreau, "To shoot a bird is to lose it." Professor Small had the gentle
instinct that respects life, and he refused to take that which he could
not give. To his youthful companion he imparted, in a degree, the secret
of enjoying things without the passion for possession and the lust of
ownership.

There is a myth abroad that college towns are intellectual centers; but
the number of people in a college town (or any other) who really think, is