The son of a poor farmer, at the age of twenty he ran away from the paternal acres, and became for a short time copying-clerk to a lawyer, but, tiring soon of these duties, he enlisted in the army and found himself private in a regiment at Chatham, which was ordered to America. His merit soon raised him to the rank of corporal, and then of sergeant-major. At this time he saw his future wife and the mother of his children. The circumstances of this meeting, as described by himself in his own peculiar style, belong to this picture, while they illustrate the subject. "When I first saw my wife," he writes, "she was thirteen years old, and I was within a month of twenty-one. She was the daughter of a sergeant-major of artillery, and I was the sergeant-major of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts near the city of St. John, in the province of New Brunswick. I sat in the same room with her for about an hour, in company with others, and I made up my mind that she was the very girl for me. That I thought her beautiful is certain, for that I had always said should be an indispensable qualification; but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct of which I have said so much, and which has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of winter, and of course the snow several feet deep on the ground, and the weather piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had done my morning's writing, to go out at break of day to take a walk on a hill at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about three mornings after I had first seen her, I had, by an invitation to breakfast with me, got up two young men to join me in my walk, and our road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on the snow, scrubbing out a washing-tub. 'That's the girl for me!' said I, when we had got out of her hearing."[126] To her he plighted faith. After eight years of service in the army, and his return to England, he obtained his discharge and married her. [126] Life, pp. 44, 45. In 1792 Cobbett came to the United States, living in Philadelphia, where he was bookseller, publisher, author, and libeller by profession. As "Peter Porcupine" he is well known. He shot his sharp and malicious quills at the most estimable characters,--Franklin, Jefferson, Gallatin, Priestley, and even the sacred name of Washington. A heavy judgment for libel hanging suspended over him, he fled from America, and from the justice he had aroused, to commence in England a fresh career of unquestioned talents, unaccountable inconsistency, and inexhaustible malignity.