Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1848-11-09

OH tue SllllncSS Oh MONDAY.
Let us for moment survey the various epochs
of the youth Of Washington.
At the age of ten years he is left an orphan;
from the hour Of his fathers death he is educa.
ted by his widowed mother.
Atlhe age of fourteen mdshipman's warrant
is offered to him-with brilliant prospect of
naval glory in the distance. He accepts the
warrant--his destiny seems trembling in the
balancc-when his mother, who already saw
a nob!er theatre Of action open before her boy
induces him to surrender the idea of an ocean
life
He is seventeen when he takes up the instru-
mens of the surveyors craft, and crossing the
Aleghanies, beholds for the time, the customs
of the Indian people
Three years pass, and he is a pilgrim amid the
forms Of external nature.
We behold him on the ocean, amid the terror
of its storms, aud very near the doom of its ship
wrecks. His heart pillows the head of dying
brother be accompanies Laurence Washington
or voyage to Barbados, aud is absent on the
ocean, and on the shores of strange land
from the fall Of 1851 until the spring of 1852
When Laurence dies, his young brother,
Z 4,
is appointed executor Of his immense estates.
AT the age of twenty one he is designated by
the Governor Of Virginia as a Commissioner to
treat with the hostile French aud their Indian
Allies who threaten our Western borders
In the pursuit of the object of this mission he
journeys $50 miles into the trackless wilder
ness.
He is twentytwo when he nnges in battle;
his sword is unsheathed July 3D. 1854, al the
fight of the Great Meadows
AT the age of twentythree, July 9th, 1855,
he shares in the danger of Braddock's field, and
saves the wreck of the defeated army.
The great epochs of the youth of Washington
are written in the preceding paragraphs A
wonderful youth indeed. From the common
school-house into he untrodden wilderness;
from the couch of dying brother, into the
terror Of battle, Washington had already lived
| the life, before he was twenty-three years old.
Let us, my friends, write the unwritten history
of Washington. Not the dim outline which his
tory sketches, but picture of the man-with
color, shape, life and voice Yes life, for as we
go on, among the shrines of the past, the dead
viii live with US. and voice too, for as we cues
tlon the ghosts of other days, they will answer
us, although the shadows of hundred wears
brood over their graves.
And ere we hasten forth upon our Journey, let
us tor moment compare the youth of Washinr-
ton with the boyhood Of Arnold.
Washington, nourished by the counsel of a
mother, surrounded by powerful friends. and
with many kind hand for his brow when if
was stricken with fever-many kind voice for
his heart when it was heavy with sorrow.
Arnold, a trlendless boy, left by an intemper-
ate father to the world, guided, it is true, by Il
KIND mother, but a mother who saw all the
clouds of misfortune lowering upon her path,
and lelt the heaviest blows of misery upon her
breast
contrast of terrible meaningl
Washington learns from his mother to hear
all, to suffer all, aud to hold on, throuuh calm
and storm, to the right
Washington becomes the man of word
Arnold, though swayed for a while bv the
lessons of his mother, learns the bitter lesson
which the world teaches to him learns by heart
to return hate for hate, and fling wrong into the
face of wrong
Arnold becomes the omen of a world.
Learn from this the awful Importance of those
early influences which shape the mind and mould
the heart Youth is tender pIant-beware
now you tread upon it! Nurse it generously, and
one day it will bloom before you in the manhood
OF Washington. Crush it, and it will one
DAY wound your heel with the serpent sting OF
Arnold
And while we read together the great lesson
OF WashIngtons youth, and trace, side by side,