"The father was a self-taught man, deeply versed in the mysteries of
science, and, as he could tell the name of every flower that blossomed
in the wood and grew in the garden, and used to sit up late of nights
at his books, or reading the mystic story of the starry heavens, men
thought he was crazed or bewitched, and avoided him, and even hated
him, as the ignorant ever shun and dread the gifted and enlightened. A
few there were, and among others the minister, and lawyer, and
physician of the place, who showed some willingness to afford him
countenance; but they soon dropped his acquaintance, for they found
the old man somewhat reserved and morose, and, moreover, their vanity
was wounded by discovering the extent of his knowledge. To the
minister he would quote the Fathers and the Scriptures in the original
tongues and showed himself well armed with the weapons of polemical
controversy. He astonished the lawyer by his profound acquaintance
with jurisprudence; and the physician was surprised at the extent of
his medical knowledge. So they all deserted him, and the minister,
from whom the old man differed in some trifling points of doctrine,
spoke very slightingly of him; and by and by all looked upon the
self-educated farmer with eyes of aversion. But he little cared for
that, for he derived his consolation from loftier resources, and in
the untracked paths of science found a pleasure as in the pathless
woods! He instructed his son in all his lore--the languages,
literature, history, philosophy, science, were unfolded, one by one,
to the enthusiastic son of the solitary. Years rolled away, and the
old man died. He died when a storm convulsed the face of nature, when
the wind howled around his shattered dwelling, and the lightning
played above the roof; and though he went to heaven in faith and
purity, the vulgar thought and said that the evil one had claimed his
own in the thunder and commotion of the elements. I cannot paint to