Simon Greenleaf--In His Own Words II

"In the autumn of 1789 I was advanced to the South School in Newburyport, among 'great boys,' to read in the Bible-class, and 'make strokes & Os.' [A later essay reviews a booklet containing his penmanship exercises from the early 1790s.] I think this was the greatest epoch in my life; as I now left the society of little boys & girls, & assumed rank among boys of a higher grade. I shall not soon forget the sense of manly character which inspired me, when I showed my mother the ink on my finger, & told her I was a writer! For I was then six years old (My father, at that age, began to chew tobacco. Manhood is not so soon developed now, as it was then. Hence the equivalent period, that of sufficient age to chew tobacco, does not arrive now, till about 20 or 21! Prenez-vous?) While a member of this respectable class of stroke & O-boys, I went in [can't make out the word], with a goose-quill (should have been gosling's) stuck in my hat, as a badge of vocation, to welcome Gen. Washington to our town. It was a brave sight. I shall never forget it. "My father knew him":--a fact of which I did not suffer my companions to be ignorant--At this school our instruction was 'capital'--i.e., by knocks on the head; and 'fundamental'--or by what was called 'trouncing'--of which latter I never had the benefit.

In Nov. 1790 my father removed from Newburyport to New Gloucester (Maine, but still a part of MA), taking all the family but myself. The parting scene, when the vessel left the wharf is very fresh in my memory--the throng of friends--the adieus--my mother's head just above the quarter railing--my brother Moses's hand waiving (sic) to me out of the cabin window--& the tall figure of my father on the deck, lifting his cocked hat, with "God bless you" to all. I looked on, very sadly, & returned to my grandfather's, whose "Simon" I had now become. I owed this preference, in all probability, to my name, which was that of my uncle, his deceased eldest son. The introduction of this name into the family was amusing. My grandmother, who must have been a wild romp, told me that she was courted by one Simon Frost; whom she refused, preferring my grandfather; but by way of consoling the rejected swain, she promised him that if ever she had a son, the boy should be named for him, which was done accordingly." I always suspected that she had some liking for the swain, & that her partiality to me might have some such source. Be that as it may, I was petted & whipped by the old lady, as the wind happened to veer, & 'purred' over by my kind grandfather, & taught reading writing & Eng. grammar by Deacon Moody, at the town school till Jan. 23, 1795, when my father took me into Maine, to his own house. I lived on the farm till Sept. 1800; working hard at all manner of farming & making farming tools, except about three months in the winter, when I went to school. We lived precisely as other farmers, & mixed with their children in all their work & play. I however continued to cultivate a taste for drawing & painting in water colors, in which I made some proficiency; & learned to scrape the violin.

But for two or three successive summers I had a fever & my parents began to think of putting me to some other employment. I wished to be a watch-maker, in Joe Louis's shop in Portland; but my brother Moses prevented me. Then I was for being a sailor. Mr. Giddings was going to the West Indies in a brig with lumber, belonging to his brother-in-law Capt. Toppan (sp?) of Brunswick, & got consent of parents to go with him. He taught me Navigation, in a sailor's way, so far as to keep a dead reckoning, & my chest was ready, when the vessel was sold, cargo & all, and the voyage abandoned."

Are you enjoying the narrative so far? This is the first time, I believe, that almost anything of a personal nature, from the pen of Greenleaf or someone else, has been written about him. What kind of impression are you getting of him thus far? I see him as a rather optimistic and accepting person, one who looks back and sees some of the whimsical aspects of his childhood. There is no brooding, no intense conviction of sin, no sense that the dark ghouls of Puritanism overhang the lad. But, there is a sense of what you might call moral rectitude or moral concern, where he mentions, for example, that one of the purposes of narrating some of his story might be for an example of character development. But nothing so far prepares us for the fact that he would be a most diligent lawyer and reporter, as well as a noted law professor. He certainly wasn't "tracked," as we use the word today.

One more essay is necessary to conclude this remarkable autobiographical narrative.

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