The Life Of Alexander H Stephens Author:Richard Malcolm Johnston, William Hand Browne Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Home-work—Youthful Trials—Recollections of his Father—A Painful Lesson—" Learning Manners"—Exhibit,ons—Almost u Tragedy—Death of Andrew B. Stephe... more »ns—A Great Sorrow. From his sixth to his fifteenth year Alexander Stephens spent far more time at toil of some sort than in either study or play; and after the time previously referred to, he was not at school at all until the year 1820, and in the succeeding years only when his services could be spared from the house or the field. From the letter last quoted it will be seen that his schooling in all this time amounted to about two years, and that his work was about as various as any boy's could be. But from his earliest youth, whatever were his allotted duties, he labored at them with a pertinacity and effectiveness that might have won praise from a strong man, at a time when, to a stranger, the idea of one so frail accomplishing anything in the way of work must have seemed uureasonable. We quote again from " Mr. Finkle" : " I have often heard Boss say that be did not go to school from that time [in 1818, to Nathaniel Day] until the fall or late summer of 1820. He went for about three months in that year, to his father, who then taught school on the Woodruff Hill. In 1821 he went again for a short time to his father, at the same Cross Roads of which Mr. Akins spoke. The next year. 1822, he went for about three months more to his father, who then taught near Powder Creek meeting-house, and at a spring then known as the Booker Spring. In the following year also he went to his father for about the same time and at the same place. None of these periods was exact except the first at Mr. Day's school, where he was entered for three months and went for the full time. His father kept a diary in which the daily attendance...« less