The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1904-06-12
A Vermont Boy Who Dreamt, While at
Work With Hoe in His Hand, of
Great Farm in the West
How That Dream Led to Heavy Fight for
an Education ard to Harder Fight
for Law Practice.

Along in the SOS Of the last century,
when Seward and Gallatin and Greeley
were deliberately provoking the high
spirit Of the South, a young boy away
up in the mountains OF Vermont was
dreaming a dream. His people were
not well-to-do, the people of this young
boy, and dreaming dreams was about
the only luxury open to him. Most OF
the day he spent either in school or
in the garden. 1t was during his work
among the peas and beans that he
found time for his castles in the air.
and this was partly because weeds
occupy only the sight and the fingers
and partly because the New England
school-ma'am. then as now. absorbed
all the faculties at once.
II may be you yourself have worked.
barefoot, among vegetables in a scant
but exacting town garden II Is prob
able you dreamed Of fighting Indians, of
shooting wild animals in Africa, OF run
ming down pirates on the Spanish main.
But this young boy, Leslie-he was the
son OF Boardman Shaw and his wife,
Louisa-was dreaming Of other things.
and these they were:
He would first get an education-not
the education which made clerks in the
Stowe stores. but the education which
set the parson and the doctor apart
from other men. Then he would work
and work until he had a farm tout
West" Of thousands and thousands Of
acres. Then he would divide this great
estate into orchards and wheat fields
and young timber and corn. and so on,
with a series Of branch railroads run
ming from the farmhouse at the center
out TO each subdivision And then-he
would be the head Of it ALL
This dream REQUIRED often. IT chung
to the gardeners memory until he was
as tall as half the men in the village
ana had been graduated from the coun-
try schools. Growth and graduation
came early. so that young Shaw was a
school teacher before ne was twenty
years old. But this dream survived
even the droning Of Lindley Murray's
grammar and the tensity of the district
spelling bees-and between times the
teacher went on 20 school 10 accomplish
the FIRST OF his three labors.
Looking Toward the West.
Stowe. VI, graduated Leslie Shaw in
all its branches while he was still a
youth. The Peoples Academy at Nor
risviile added its diploma before he was
twenty-one years old. Both felt, no
doubt, that they had done their part
IN giving him as good a common school
education as New England offered out
side Of Boston What would the direc-
tors OF the Peoples Academy have
thought, and the moderator Of the Stowe
town meeting. IL they had known that
their graduate not only had obtained an
education at their hands. but had put
away In his wallet several hundred dol
lars? They could not possibly have paid
their young teachers any less than they
paid Shaw: but they might have kept
such money saver IN one town or the
other.
with this money, Prof" Shaw set
on for the West This was in 1863, when
the whole country had awakened to stu
pendous activity in all lines. and this
journey was the first assertion OF the
young mans legal maturity. He realiz-
ed as well as anyone else that this