into poetry at fifteen, and had very romantic attachments to certain trees. J. T.
Trowbridge learned German, French, and Latin alone before twenty-one;
composed poetry at the plow and wrote it out in the evening. Henry followed a
rabbit under the Public Library at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted
him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, read all the fiction the library
contained, then turned to physics, astronomy, and chemistry, and developed a
passion for the sciences. He was stage-struck, and became a good amateur actor.
H. H. Boyesen was thrilled by nature and by the thought that he was a
Norseman. He had several hundred pigeons, rabbits, and other pets; loved to be
in the woods at night; on leaving home for school was found with his arms
around the neck of a calf to which he was saying good-by. Maxwell, at sixteen,
had almost a horror of destroying a leaf, flower, or fly. Jahn found growing in
his heart, at this age, an inextinguishable feeling for right and wrong—which
later he thought the cause of all his inner weal and outer woe. When Nansen was
in his teens he spent weeks at a time alone in the forest, full of longings,
courage, altruism, wanted to get away from every one and live like Crusoe. T. B.
Reed, at twelve and thirteen, had a passion for reading; ran away at seventeen;
painted, acted, and wrote poetry. Cartwright, at sixteen, heard voices from the
sky saying, "Look above, thy sins are forgiven thee." Herbert Spencer became an
engineer at seventeen, after one idle year. He never went to school, but was a
private pupil of his uncle. Sir James Mackintosh grew fond of history at eleven;
fancied he was the Emperor of Constantinople; loved solitude at thirteen; wrote
poetry at fourteen; and fell in love at seventeen. Thomas Buxton loved dogs,
horses, and literature, and combined these while riding on an old horse. At
sixteen be fell in love with an older literary woman, which aroused every latent
power to do or die, and thereafter he took all the school prizes. Scott began to
like poetry at thirteen. Pascal wrote treatises on conic sections at sixteen and
invented his arithmetical machine at nineteen. Nelson went to sea at twelve;
commanded a boat in peril at fifteen, which at the same age he left to fight a
polar bear. Banks, the botanist, was idle and listless till fourteen, could not travel
the road marked out for him; when coming home from bathing, he was struck by
the beauty of the flowers and at once began his career. Montcalm and Wolfe
both distinguished themselves as leaders in battle at sixteen. Lafayette came to
America at nineteen, thrilled by our bold strike for liberty. Gustavus Adolphus
declared his own majority at seventeen and was soon famous. Ida Lewis rescued
four men in a boat at sixteen. Joan of Arc began at thirteen to have the visions
which were the later guide of her life.
Mr. Swift has collected interesting biographical material[15] to show that school