It is true that he had
left home in search of bread for his hungry family, but he went blessing
the necessity that drove him to America. The boasted freedom of the New
World meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and work
wherever he pleased; it meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to
throw off the shackles of superstition, to test his own fate, unhindered
by political or religious tyranny. He was only a young man when he
landed--thirty-two; and most of his life he had been held in
leading-strings. He was hungry for his untasted manhood.
Three years passed in sordid struggle and disappointment. He was not
prepared to make a living even in America, where the day laborer eats
wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect him
against the pursuing Nemesis of his limitations; he must expiate the
sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed at
birth with a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament, and an
abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was starved,
that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. In his youth this
dearly gotten learning was sold, and the price was the bread and salt
which he had not been trained to earn for himself. Under the wedding
canopy he was bound for life to a girl whose features were still strange
to him; and he was bidden to multiply himself, that sacred learning
might be perpetuated in his sons, to the glory of the God of his
fathers.
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