n the course of his desultory schooling he
picked up some Latin, a little Greek, a good deal of French, and an
inconceivable medley of odds and ends of knowledge, which his
wonderful memory enabled him to use sometimes with startling effect.

Everywhere else, in the whole world, children are taught that
virtue is self-control. In the Southern States, among these
tobacco-lords, boys learned just the opposite lesson,--that virtue is
self-indulgence. This particular youth, thin-skinned, full of talent,
fire, and passion, the heir to a large estate, fatherless, would have
been in danger anywhere of growing up untrained,--a wild beast in
broadcloth. In the Virginia of that day, in the circle in which he
lived, there was nothing for him in the way either of curb or spur. He
did what he pleased, and nothing else. All that was noble in his
life,--those bursts of really fine oratory, his flashes of good sense,
his occasional generosities, his hatred of debt, and his eager haste
to pay it,--all these things were due to the original excellence of
his race. In the very dregs of good wine there is flavor. We cannot
make even good vinegar out of a low quality of wine.

His gentle mother taught him all the political economy he ever took to
heart. "Johnny," said she to him one day, when they had reached a
point in their ride that commanded an extensive view,

"all this land belongs to you and your brother. It is your
father's inheritance. When you get to be a man, you must not
sell your land: it is the first step to ruin for a boy to
part with his father's home. Be sure to keep it as long as
you live. Keep your land, and your land will keep you."

There never came a time when his mind was mature and masculine enough
to _consider_ this advice. He clung to his land as Charles Stuart
clung to his prerogative.

All the early life of this youth was wandering and desultory. At
fourteen, we find him at Princeton College in New Jersey, where, we
are told, he fought a duel, exchanged shots twice with his adversary,
and put a ball into his body which he carried all his life. By this
time, too, the precocious and ungovernable boy had become, as he
flattered himself, a complete atheist. One of his favorite amusements
at Princeton was to burlesque the precise and perhaps ungraceful
Presbyterians of the place. The library of his Virginian home, it
appears, was furnished with a great supply of what the French mildly
cal