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Page 4
Such, at this day, is the country which gave birth to our hero:
prophetically styled Israel by the good Puritans, his parents, since,
for more than forty years, poor Potter wandered in the wild wilderness
of the world's extremest hardships and ills.
How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his father's stray
cattle among these New England hills he himself like a beast should be
hunted through half of Old England, as a runaway rebel. Or, how could he
ever have dreamed, when involved in the autumnal vapors of these
mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him three thousand miles
across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal-foes of London. But so it
was destined to be. This little boy of the hills, born in sight of the
sparkling Housatonic, was to linger out the best part of his life a
prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.
CHAPTER II.
THE YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES OF ISRAEL.
Imagination will easily picture the rural day of the youth of Israel.
Let us pass on to a less immature period.
It appears that he began his wanderings very early; moreover, that ere,
on just principles throwing off the yoke off his king, Israel, on
equally excusable grounds, emancipated himself from his sire. He
continued in the enjoyment of parental love till the age of eighteen,
when, having formed an attachment for a neighbor's daughter--for some
reason, not deemed a suitable match by his father--he was severely
reprimanded, warned to discontinue his visits, and threatened with some
disgraceful punishment in case he persisted. As the girl was not only
beautiful, but amiable--though, as will be seen, rather weak--and her
family as respectable as any, though unfortunately but poor, Israel
deemed his father's conduct unreasonable and oppressive; particularly as
it turned out that he had taken secret means to thwart his son with the
girl's connections, if not with the girl herself, so as to place almost
insurmountable obstacles to an eventual marriage. For it had not been
the purpose of Israel to marry at once, but at a future day, when
prudence should approve the step. So, oppressed by his father, and
bitterly disappointed in his love, the desperate boy formed the
determination to quit them both for another home and other friends.
It was on Sunday, while the family were gone to a farmhouse church near
by, that he packed up as much of his clothing as might be contained in a
handkerchief, which, with a small quantity of provision, he hid in a
piece of woods in the rear of the house. He then returned, and continued
in the house till about nine in the evening, when, pretending to go to
bed, he passed out of a back door, and hastened to the woods for his
bundle.
It was a sultry night in July; and that he might travel with the more
ease on the succeeding day, he lay down at the foot of a pine tree,
reposing himself till an hour before dawn, when, upon awaking, he heard
the soft, prophetic sighing of the pine, stirred by the first breath of
the morning. Like the leaflets of that evergreen, all the fibres of his
heart trembled within him; tears fell from his eyes. But he thought of
the tyranny of his father, and what seemed to him the faithlessness of
his love; and shouldering his bundle, arose, and marched on.
His intention was to reach the new countries to the northward and
westward, lying between the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, and the
Yankee settlements on the Housatonic. This was mainly to elude all
search. For the same reason, for the first ten or twelve miles,
shunning the public roads, he travelled through the woods; for he knew
that he would soon be missed and pursued.
He reached his destination in safety; hired out to a farmer for a month
through the harvest; then crossed from the Hudson to the Connecticut.
Meeting here with an adventurer to the unknown regions lying about the
head waters of the latter river, he ascended with this man in a canoe,
paddling and pulling for many miles. Here again he hired himself out for
three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two
hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire. The cheapness of the land
was not alone owing to the newness of the country, but to the perils
investing it. Not only was it a wilderness abounding with wild beasts,
but the widely-scattered inhabitants were in continual dread of being,
at some unguarded moment, destroyed or made captive by the Canadian
savages, who, ever since the French war, had improved every opportunity
to make forays across the defenceless frontier.
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