ompetent help of a brother, the Rev. Patrick
Henry, rector of St. Paul's parish, in Hanover, and apparently a good
Scotch classicist. In this way our Patrick acquired some knowledge of
Latin and Greek, and rather more knowledge of mathematics,--the latter
being the only branch of book-learning for which, in those days, he
showed the least liking. However, under such circumstances, with
little real discipline, doubtless, and amid plentiful interruptions,
the process of ostensible education went forward with the young man;
and even this came to an end by the time that he was fifteen years
old.

At that age, he was duly graduated from the domestic schoolroom into
the shop of a country tradesman hard by. After an apprenticeship there
of a single year, his father set him up in trade, joining with him in
the conduct of a country store his elder brother, William, a youth
more indolent, if possible, as well as more disorderly and
uncommercial, than Patrick himself. One year of this odd partnership
brought the petty concern to its inevitable fate. Just one year after
that, having attained the ripe age of eighteen, and being then
entirely out of employment, and equally out of money, Patrick rounded
out his embarrassments, and gave symmetry to them, as it were, by
getting married,--and that to a young woman quite as impecunious as
himself. The name of this damsel was Sarah Shelton; her father being a
small farmer, and afterward a small tavern-keeper in the neighborhood.
In the very rashness and absurdity of this proceeding on the part of
these two interesting young paupers, irresistibly smitten with each
other's charms, and mutually resolved to defy their own helplessness
by doubling it, there seems to have been a sort of semi-ludicrous
pathos which constituted an irresistible call for help.

The parents on both sides heard the call, and by their joint efforts
soon established the young couple on a little farm near at hand, from
which, by their own toil, reenforced by that of half a dozen slaves,
they were expected to extort a living. This experiment, the success of
which depended on exactly those qualities which Patrick did not then
possess,--industry, order, sharp calculation, persistence,--turned out
as might have been predicted. At the end of two years he made a forced
sale of some of his slaves, and invested the proceeds in the stock of
a country store once more. But as he had now proved himself to be a
bad farmer, and a st