CHAPTER II.
YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD.
JOHN BROWN'S childhood passed, like that of most boys in a new country, in the midst of active labor and rude sport, but with little advantage of schooling at home. Like all serious-minded lads of Puritan stock, however, he dreamed at one time of completing his education in a college, and then studying for the ministry. He "experienced religion," and joined the "Orthodox" or Congregational Church at Hudson in 1816. Soon after this he revisited Connecticut, and went to the town of Canton to consult a kinsman of his father, the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, concerning his studies in divinity,—whose advice was that Owen Brown's son should fit for Amherst College (where his uncle, the Rev. Heman Humphrey, was soon to be President), and that his teacher should be the Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, in Massachusetts.[1] This school at Plainfield was famous for graduating ministers and missionaries, and the poet Bryant had been a student there a few years before,—Plainfield being next to Cummington, where Bryant was born, and not far from Amherst. No doubt the lad's hope was to fit himself at Plainfield and then enter at Amherst, working his way by his own efforts, as so many young men have since done. But he was at-
- ↑ John Brown seems to have been for a short time at the Morris Academy in Connecticut, in company with his younger brother Salmon, already mentioned. A story of the two brothers is told, how John, finding that Salmon had committed some school offence, for which the teacher had pardoned him, said to the teacher: "Mr. Vaill, if Salmon had done this thing at home, father would have punished him. I know he would expect you to punish him now for doing this,—and if you don't, I shall." That night, finding that Salmon was likely to escape punishment, John made good his word,—more in sorrow than in anger,—giving his brother a severe flogging.
