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into the Society; and they were accordingly received as if members by birth.
Custom, if not positive rule, requires among Friends that children should as far as practicable be educated in schools under the care of the Society, so that their tender years may be protected until their principles shall have sufficiently taken root to resist the seductions of the world. As no school of this kind existed in her immediate neighborhood, Mrs. Morton felt herself compelled, when no longer satisfied with her own tuition, to send her young son from home; and, for several years of her residence at West Chester, he was placed in one or another of the Friends' boarding-schools in the State of New York, where he acquired the usual rudiments of an English education.
At this early age, the boy evinced a literary turn of mind, being extremely fond of historical reading, and frequently trying his hand in writing verses, an exercise very useful to the young by giving them a command of language not so easily attained in any other way. I am told that his bent towards natural science was also received at this period. Among the visitors of his mother was Thomas Rogers, a gentleman belonging to the Society of Friends living in Philadelphia, who had a great fondness for mineralogy, and imparted a portion of the same fondness to the young son of his hostess, whom he delighted to take with him in his exploratory walks in the neighborhood.
The visits of Mr. Rogers resulted in his marriage with Mrs. Morton, and her return with him to Philadelphia along with her two children, whom he loved and treated as if they were his own. Dr. Morton always spoke in the kindest and most affectionate terms of his step-father. He was about thirteen years old when this change took place.
After the removal to Philadelphia, he was sent for a time to the famous boarding-school of Friends at West Town, in Chester County, Pennsylvania; and subsequently, in order to complete his mathematical studies, to a private school in Burlington, New Jersey, under the care of John Gummere, a member of the Society of Friends, and eminent as a teacher.
Having remained for one year under the instruction of Mr. Gummere, he left the school, in the summer of 1815, and entered as an
