it was not laid down until I understood all its pages could inform me. 'Neil's History of the Indians of New England/ the first ever published, and other histories of that benighted and oppressed people were read. While preparing for college I have more than once studied my Virgil lessons by moonlight; in this way, often times I overstrained the optic nerves, the stress so often brought upon them caused near-sightedness and to be slow of apprehension. . . .
"At the age of fourteen I first experienced a difficulty in utterance. For one or two years I suffered an impediment in my speech; in the presence of superiors was unable readily to begin utterance. About the time of entering college I discovered myself to be 'slow of speech' (of apprehension). . . ."[1]
Earnest, introspective, and diffident, he was also religious to the degree of fanaticism. "In my youth the Lord Jesus revealed to me in visions the lonely, laborious and eventful life I was to live; and gave at the time of the visions, and afterwards, unmistakable signs that the revelations were by Him."[2] In practical matters, however, he showed early in life a disposition to get at the truth through actual experiment. Thus he said:
"A year or two prior to my entering college, much was said in the papers in regard to a perpetual motion. I went into a workship determined on knowing the reality of such a motion, spent several days in an attempt to find out the truth about it. After several days of study and mechanical labor, I was enabled to demonstrate its impossibility. . . ."[3]
Of his college life little is known except that he enjoyed the respect of his fellow students as a young man who could be relied upon to meet the problems which presented themselves.
"When 'in college,' my class was put to the study of astronomy. For the purpose of illustrating, I constructed an Orrery—a machine showing the pathways of the moon round
