ould read a little in
the first primer. With difficulty he could make certain hieroglyphics
which looked like his name. He could also perform simple sums in
addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The mysteries of division he
never surmounted.

This was the extent of his education. He left school, and in the
laborious life upon which he entered, never after improved any
opportunity for mental culture. The disappointment which David had
encountered in his love affair, only made him more eager to seek a new
object upon which he might fix his affections. Not far from Mr.
Kennedy's there was the cabin of a settler, where there were two or
three girls. David had occasionally met them. Boy as he was, for he was
not yet eighteen, he suddenly and impetuously set out to see if he
could not pick, from them, one for a wife.

Without delay he made his choice, and made his offer, and was as
promptly accepted as a lover. Though they were both very young, and
neither of them had a dollar, still as those considerations would not
have influenced David in the slightest degree, we know not why they
where not immediately married. Several months of very desperate and
satisfactory courtship passed away, when the time came for the nuptials
of the little Quaker girl, which ceremony was to take place at the
cabin of her uncle David and his "girl" were invited to the wedding.
The scene only inflamed the desires of David to hasten his
marriage-day. He was very importunate in pressing his claims. She
seemed quite reluctant to fix the day, but at last consented; and says
David, "I thought if that day come, I should be the happiest man in the
created world, or in the moon, or anywhere else."

In the mean time David had become very fond of his rifle, and had
raised enough money to buy him one. He was still living with the
Quaker. Game was abundant, and the young hunter often brought in
valuable supplies of animal food. There were frequent shooting-matches
in that region. David, proud of his skill, was fond of attending them.
But his Quaker employer considered them a species of gambling, which
drew together all the idlers and vagrants of the region, and he could
not approve of them.

There was another boy living at that time with the Quaker. They
practised all sorts of deceptions to steal away to the shooting-matches
under pretence that they were engaged in other things. This boy was
quite in love with a sister of David's intended wife. The st