'From fifteen years and upward he felt a good deal of anxiety to learn, but could only read and study a little, both for want of time and on account of inflammation of the eyes. He managed by the help of books, however, to make himself tolerably well acquainted with common arithmetic and surveying, which he practised more or less after he was twenty years old.' 'John began early in life to discover a great liking to fine cattle, horses, sheep, and swine; and as soon as circumstances would enable him, he began to be a practical shepherd--it being a calling for which, in early life, he had a kind of enthusiastic longing, together with the idea that as a business it bade fair to afford him the means of CARRYING OUT HIS GREATEST OR PRINCIPAL OBJECT.' Here we touch the keynote of this life of manifold outward occupations, but of one consuming desire. That PRINCIPAL OBJECT filled his horizon even in childhood. He loved to tell how, like his father before him, he fell captive to the slave's dumb plea and pledged his whole strength to the chivalrous task of breaking his fetters. It happened on this wise. In those long journeys he was allowed to take, he was the 'business guest' of a slave-owner, who was pleased with his resourcefulness at such an age. He was the object of curious attention, and was treated as 'company' at table. On the estate was a young negro just his own age, and as intelligent as he. Young John struck up an acquaintance with him, and could not fail to contrast the fashion in which he himself was pampered with the way the young darkie was coarsely treated with scant fare and ill-housing. His frequent thrashings seemed to bruise young John's spirit as much as they did his flesh. They were not always administered with the orthodox whip, but with a shovel or anything else that came first to hand. Young John pondered long upon this contrast, and tells us how the iniquity of slavery was borne in upon his young heart, and he was drawn to this little coloured playmate, who had neither father nor mother known to him. The Bible was the final court of appeal in the Brown family, and the verdict of that court was that they two--the slave and the guest--were brothers, so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty drew young John to 'swear eternal war with slavery.' That vow, never recanted or forgotten, became the text of his life. It interprets all his vagaries and reconciles what else were hopeless inconsistencies. It was a devout obsession which made him a wanderer all his days, and in the end carried him to prison and to death. To a child a great call had come, and a child's voice had replied, 'Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth.' And ears and heart tingled at messages that seemed to come from the Unseen. CHAPTER III THE LONG WAITING-TIME