of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter
Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he
was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been
my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my
humiliation.

Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same
pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and
plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel
any more like the other boys than before.

It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual
contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the
history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the
neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other
countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's
possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the
_Gentleman's Magazine,_ which I studied with delight. I had also from him
_Roderick Random_, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now
understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found
favor with sensible people.

My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little
boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd
sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the
boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant
as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the
Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years
after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's
mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and