HIS DESTINY UNDERGOES A CHANGE.
"God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them
use their talents."--_Shakspeare._
Daniel Wheelwright grew up a tall and stately youth; and to do him
justice, his personal appearance was not a little in his favor. I have
before intimated that the city in which he dwelt was the seat of a
learned institution; and it was his fortune--ill or good, will appear
in the sequel--to make the acquaintance of several inmates of the
university, who seemed "to take a liking to him," to borrow the quaint
juvenile expression in such cases, especially during the ripening and
ingathering of the fruit in his father's little orchard. At these
seasons their visits were frequent; and as the student's life appeared
to be at once more easy and promising than a coachmaker's, and more
genteel withal, Daniel manifested a desire to change his occupation. It
may be, however--for Daniel is my friend, and were he not, I would do
him no injustice--that the fire of ambition had begun to glow in his
bosom, and that he was really and truly desirous of describing a wider
"circle" than that of a carriage wheel. His mother, too--mothers always
most love and indulge the oldest son--discovered a genius in Daniel
requiring only means and opportunity, to wing an eagle-flight. It was
some considerable time, however, before the father could be persuaded
into the measure. By dint of industry and economy, he was getting along
snugly in the world; and as he had no more extended education himself,
he judged it all-sufficient if a man could read his Bible, and cast the
interest on a note of hand by the assistance of Daboll's Arithmetic. My
friend's common-school education, therefore, was judged by his father
to be all that was necessary for an honest man. But the woman
prevailed,--as women generally do. It happened that at the distance of
some sixty or seventy miles farther up the vale of the Mohawk, lived a
man whom she had previously known in New-Jersey, and whose occupation
was that of "teaching young ideas how to shoot"--not grouse and
woodcock, but to shoot forth into scions of learning. He had a son whom
he desired exceedingly to send to college; but as he was forever
compelled to be scraping the bottom of his scanty exchequer to supply
the current wants of his family, he was destitute of the means;--and
there were fewer education societies, and other facilities for
obtaining eleemosynary instruction in those days than in the present
age of disinterested benevolence. The inventive genius of the woman was
therefore not slow to devise a project by which her friend might be
served, while at the same time her own favorite design might be
furthered--and that, too, without making, even prospectively, any
essential encroachment upon the means of her husband. For the
attainment of this object--or rather for the removal of so formidable
an obstacle in the future career of her son--she had for a long while
been taxing her inventive and diplomatic powers. An arrangement was
therefore soon negotiated, by which the pedagogue received our hero
under his own roof, and prepared him for the university, while his own
son was taken as a boarder into the family of the coachmaker, where he
remained during the whole of his collegiate course. The immediate
results were auspicious. The son of the pedagogue took the honors of
his class, and has since been enabled to rejoice as the president of a
transmontane university; and our hero was, in turn, duly prepared for
matriculation beneath the academic evergreens of his own neighborhood.
It is but fair to acknowledge, moreover, that students have entered
that institution, as well as divers others, no better prepared than
Daniel Wheelwright. Notwithstanding the natural indolence of his
character, he knew that he must know something before he could enter
college, and that in case of a failure, he must again cultivate more
acquaintance with the _felloes_ of the shop, than with the fellows
of the university; and with the stimulus of such a consideration before
him, he applied himself to his books with extraordinary diligence. His
preceptor was in all respects adequate to his task; and the requisites
of the college being quite liberal and republican--not repressing the
generous ardor of young ambition by exacting too much in the
outset--the aspiring Daniel crossed the threshhold of the university
without any considerable difficulty. His prudent and sagacious mother
had managed every thing with consummate forecast and tact; and to avoid
any difficulty that might have resulted from too many unanswered
questions, her son had been represented to the faculty as a very modest
and diffident youth, who knew much more than he could tell--like the
grave bird, of which it was believed that although it said but little,
it thought the more. Indeed, it is believed that he had actually read
Cornelius Nepos and three books of the Æneid. He had likewise thumbed
over his Greek grammar, and gone through the gospel of John. The kind
mother heard of his initiatory success with delight, and the father was
rather gratified than otherwise--especially as it cost him nothing.