the white fleece from the sky. As if an ocean rolled between man and
man, intercommunication is often suspended for weeks and weeks.

Such, at this day, is the country which gave birth to our hero:
prophetically styled Israel by the good Puritans, his parents, since,
for more than forty years, poor Potter wandered in the wild wilderness
of the world's extremest hardships and ills.

How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his father's stray
cattle among these New England hills he himself like a beast should be
hunted through half of Old England, as a runaway rebel. Or, how could he
ever have dreamed, when involved in the autumnal vapors of these
mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him three thousand miles
across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal-foes of London. But so it
was destined to be. This little boy of the hills, born in sight of the
sparkling Housatonic, was to linger out the best part of his life a
prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.




CHAPTER II.

THE YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES OF ISRAEL.


Imagination will easily picture the rural day of the youth of Israel.
Let us pass on to a less immature period.

It appears that he began his wanderings very early; moreover, that ere,