Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
While at Buffalo the seniors of the party made an excursion to Niagara,
but had no room in their vehicle for the boy. Young Chase, upon this,
with characteristic energy, picked up another boy who wanted to see the
falls, and the two enterprising young gentlemen footed it through the
snow for twenty miles, and saw the falls in company with their elders.
He remained two years with the Bishop, who was a peremptory man, and
used his nephew as he did himself and everybody else about him, that
is, made him work just as hard as he could.
The great missionary Bishop had so much to do, and so little to do it
with, that he had to make up for lack of money by incessant and severe
labor, and with such help as he could get. His nephew being his own
flesh and blood, he felt perhaps at liberty to drive a little more
sharply than the rest, as that is the form in which the family instinct
shows itself in people of his character.
The Bishop supplemented his own scanty salary by teaching school and
working a farm, and so Salmon's preparatory studies were seasoned with
an abundance of severe labor.
The youth was near sighted, and troubled with an obstinate lisp. The
former disability was incurable, but the latter he overcame by means of
a long and persevering course of reading aloud.
On the whole, the Bishop seems to have thought well of his nephew, for
one day in refusing him leave to go in swimming, he did so with the
complimentary exclamation, "Why, Salmon, the country might lose its
future President, were I to let you get drowned."
After being fitted under his uncle, Chase entered Dartmouth College.
One anecdote of Chase's college life is characteristic, as showing that
courageous and steady sense of justice which formed a leading feature
of his after life. One of his classmates was sentenced by the faculty
to be expelled from college on a charge of which Chase knew him to
be wholly innocent. Chase, after in vain arguing the case with the
president, finally told him that he would go too, as he would not stay
in an institution where his friends were treated with such injustice.
The two youths packed up their goods and drove off. But the faculty
sent word after them almost before they had got out of the village,
that the sentence was rescinded and they might come back. They said,
however, that they must take time to consider whether they would do
so, and they took a week, having a pleasant vacation, after which they
returned.
After graduating, Mr. Chase found himself dependent on his own
exertions to procure his support in his law studies. He went to
Washington intending to open a private school. He waited in vain for
scholars till his money was gone, and then, feeling discouraged, asked
his uncle the Senator to get him an office under government.
The old gentleman, who seems to have been about as stern in his manner
of expressing family affection as his brother the Bishop, promptly
refused:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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