'Thaddeus of Warsaw' afterwards."

He was fond of reading, and especially fond of poetry, and his wife in
her biography says: "In the evening after he had gone to bed, his
mother would hear him repeating poem after poem to his brother, who
slept in the same room with him."

CHAPTER II

SCHOOL LIFE

Bayard had the advantage of regular attendance at the country schools
near his father's home, with two or three years at the local academy;
but his father could not afford to send him to college. He enjoyed his
school life, and in after years wrote to one of his early Quaker
teachers thus:

"I have never forgotten the days I spent in the little log schoolhouse
and the chestnut grove behind it, and I have always thought that some
of the poetry I then copied from thy manuscript books has kept an
influence over all my life since. There was one verse in particular
which has cheered and encouraged me a thousand times when prospects
seemed rather gloomy. It ran thus:

'O, why should we seek to anticipate sorrow
By throwing the flowers of the present away,
And gathering the dark-rolling, cloudy to-morrow
To darken the generous sun of to-day?'

Thou seest I have good reason to remember those old times, and to be
grateful to thee for encouraging instead of checking the first
developments of my mind."

You may easily guess from this letter that Bayard's school life was
very sedate and Quakerish. Nearly all the people in Kennett Square
were Quakers, and though Bayard's father and mother were not, they had
all the Quaker habits. Among other things, he was taught the
wickedness of all kinds of swearing. His mother "talked so earnestly
on this point that his mind became full of it; his observation and
imagination were centered upon oaths, until at last he was so
fascinated that he became filled with an uncontrollable desire to
swear. So he went out into a field, beyond hearing, and there
delivered himself of all the oaths he had ever heard or could invent,
and in as loud a voice as possible." After this he felt quite
satisfied to swear no more.

When Bayard was about twelve years old, his father was elected sheriff
of the county and went to live at West Chester for three years. The
young lad was sent to Bolmar's Academy at that place; and when the
family went back to the farm he was sent to the academy at Unionville,
three or four miles from his home. Here, at the age of sixteen, he
finished his regular sc