Youth_ Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene - G. Stanley Hall

up the old virtuous course of life with fresh power, new resolutions, with the
feeling that he had lost much time. He had a deep religious experience at
seventeen and wept for joy over his new life. He had a period before twenty
when he told desperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion for
music, and later for French novels. Rousseau at this age was discontented,
immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keats had a great change at
fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and profound stirrings of soul, with a
sudden hunger for knowledge which consumed his days with fire, and "with
passionate longing to drain the cup of experience at a draft." He was "at the
morning hour when the whole world turns to gold." "The boy had suddenly
become a poet." Chatterton was too proud to eat a gift dinner, though nearly
starved, and committed suicide at seventeen for lack of appreciation. John
Hunter was dull and hated study, but at twenty his mind awoke as did that of
Patrick Henry, who before was a lonely wanderer, sitting idly for hours under
the trees. Alexander Murray awoke to life at fifteen and acquired several
languages in less than two years. Gifford was distraught for lack of reading,
went to sea at thirteen, became a shoemaker, studying algebra late at night, was
savagely unsociable, sunk into torpor from which he was roused to do splenetic
and vexatious tricks, which alienated his friends. Rittenhouse at fourteen was a
plowboy, covering the fences with figures, musing on infinite time and space.
Benjamin Thompson was roused to a frenzy for sciences at fifteen; at seventeen
walked nine miles daily to attend lectures at Cambridge; and at nineteen married
a widow of thirty-three. Franklin had a passion for the sea; at thirteen read
poetry all night; wrote verses and sold them on the streets of Boston; doubted
everything at fifteen; left home for good at seventeen; started the first public
library in Philadelphia before he was twenty-one. Robert Fulton was poor,
dreamy, mercurial, devoted to nature, art, and literature. He became a painter of
talent, then a poet, and left home at seventeen. Bryant was sickly till fourteen
and became permanently well thereafter; was precociously devoted to nature,
religion, prayed for poetic genius and wrote Thanatopsis before he was eighteen.
Jefferson doted on animals and nature at fourteen, and at seventeen studied
fifteen hours a day. Garfield, though living in Ohio, longed for the sea, and ever
after this period the sight of a ship gave him a strange thrill. Hawthorne was
devoted to the sea and wanted to sail on and on forever and never touch shore
again. He would roam through the Maine woods alone; was haunted by the fear
that he would die before twenty-five. Peter Cooper left home at seventeen; was
passionately altruistic; and at eighteen vowed he would build a place like his
New York Institute. Whittier at fourteen found a copy of Burns, which excited
him and changed the current of his life. Holmes had a passion for flowers, broke