mother to pronounce him “a sickly boy, and one that was not equal to
work, but who might earn a living comfortably enough by taking to
pleading law, or turning minister, or doctoring, or some such like
easy calling.’ Still, there was great uncertainty which of these
vocations the youth was best endowed to fill; but, having no other
employment, the stripling was constantly lounging about the homestead,”
munching green apples and hunting for sorrel; when the same sagacious eye
that had brought to light his latent talents seized upon this circumstance
as a clew to his future path through the turmoils of the world.
“Elnathan was cut out for a doctor, she knew, for he was forever digging
for herbs, and tasting all kinds of things that grow’d about the lots.
Then again he had a natural love for doctor-stuff, for when she had left
the bilious pills out for her man, all nicely covered with maple sugar
just ready to take, Nathan had come in and swallowed them for all the
world as if they were nothing, while Ichabod (her husband) could never get
one down without making such desperate faces that it was awful to look on.”

This discovery decided the matter. Elnathan, then about fifteen, was,
much like a wild colt, caught and trimmed by clipping his bushy locks;
dressed in a suit of homespun, dyed in the butternut bark; furnished
with a “New Testament” and a “Webster’s Spelling Book,” and sent to
school. As the boy was by nature quite shrewd enough, and had
previously, at odd times, laid the foundations of reading, writing,
and arithmetic, he was soon conspicuous in the school for his
learning. The delighted mother had the gratification of hearing, from
the lips of the master, that her son was a “prodigious boy, and far
above all his class.” He also thought that “the youth had a natural
love for doctoring, as he had known him frequently advise the smaller
children against eating to much; and, once or twice, when the ignorant
little things had persevered in opposition to Elnathan’s advice, he