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The Life Travels and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
The Life Travels and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor Author:Russell, H. Conwell 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: INTELLECTUAL INCLINATION. 29 CHAPTER IV. Unfitness for Farming. — Love for Books. — Goes to tbo Academy. — Appearance as a Student. — Love for Geography... more » and History. — Enters a Printing-office. — Genins for Sketching. — Correspondence with Literary Men. — Their Advice. — Hon. Charles Miner. — Putnam's Tourist Guide. — Determination to go to Europe. — Dismal Prospects. Joseph Taylor was too intelligent and observing not to notice how unfit was his son Bayard for tending sheep, hoeing corn, and weeding beds of vegetables. The intellectual inclination exhibited by the boy in every undertaking, and his frail form, led Mr. and Mrs. Taylor to look about for some occupation for their son more fitting than the hard drudgery of a farm. The eagerness with which he devoted himself to the study of such books as could then be secured; his schemes for obtaining volumes considered by his parents, until then, wholly beyond their reach; his poems and essays, learned in the hayfield, and written out after the day's work was done, all confirmed them in the feeling that it was their duty to give up his assistance on the homestead, and permit him to follow the leading of his genins. It was with no little anxiety that they sent him " away to school"; for they felt then that they might not h-ive their son, as a companion, at home again. Mr. Gause then taught an excellent high school at West Chester, the county seat, and to that they sent him for a short time. One of his classmates at that school, now residing in Baltimore, says he remembers distinctly how awkward and rustic Bayard appeared when he first entered the school, and how radical and rapid was the change from the ploughboy to the student. He became a universal favorite, and was so able to teach, and so ready to help, that he h...« less