The date of my birth is a secret. Time was when I used to laugh at people for being slow to tell their age; but sounder philosophy has shown me a certain wisdom in this reserve. Why should men so pry into the infirmities of their fellows? One may be gray and wrinkled without being octogenarian. Let it suffice to know that I was born a subject of George the Third, and in one of the greatest places on the noble river Roanoke, of which the name is derived from the small shell which the Indians employed as a currency. My father and mother were English, and came in middle life from the valley of the Trent, leaving their elder offspring settled in Warwickshire, where I have met their descendants.

My father was an Oxford man, bred to medicine, which, however, he never practiced in America. His plantation was great, if you count the number of acres, but meager enough in arable land.

I remember the spring seasons in that delicious climate, with a sort of fragrancy in the reminiscence. April was a month which resembled a Northern May; for the calycanthus was blooming in the swamps, the coral honeysuckle blushed in every thicket, and the sweet-briar perfumed the open places and old fields, without cultivation.

Southern boys grow up equestrians. How freshly do I recall the extempore races along the wide bottoms of the creeks—as we call such brooks in America—mounted on switch-tailed colts, rough and shaggy from want of grooming, and without shoes, hat or saddle, my competitors being the black Catos, Hectors, and Antonies of the plantation.

There was what was called an old-field school about a mile from the court-house, taught by a Scotchman—a Jacobite—who accompanied the famous and beautiful Flora McDonald to Carolina. His name was McLeod, and he used the Highland mull to such an extent, that we learned to call him Sneeshin Sawney. But, when he was sober—which occurred frequently before dinner—he was one of the best classical teachers I ever had. Greek was not his forte; but commend me to him for rattling off screeds of Virgil, Horace and Ovid, as well as whole pages of the historians and orators. He had a chest full of sundry modern Latin books, some of which he would chuckle over when mellow. One of his favorites was Buchanan’s History. How he would roll in laughter over the description of the bagpipe in Buchanan’s Latinity; and how he gloried in the oft-quoted phrase, the ingenium perfervidum Scotovum. He had a pocket copy of Vida, which—from bad company—was almost as sternutatory as his impalpable snuff. The most I learned of him was, a rude acquaintance with Latin, a little French—horribly mispronounced, and a few rules of Traill’s Algebra. But, meanwhile I had enjoyed free pasture in a garret of books, belonging to my father. These were chiefly medical; and I sought out, with boyish zeal and cunning, all the most piquant cuts of surgical operations, and came at length to fancy myself possessed of half the diseases in the old nosology. When I afterward visited Leyden, I recognized some of the ancient quartos of Van Swieten and Swammerdam, in the vast but musty library. By-the-bye, when you go thither, note well that the said library contains one of the best portraits of Grotius, and one of the most striking of Erasmus. The garret had also the Elegant Extracts, in three thick volumes, and odd ends of good English literature. Among apples, flax, and invalid saddles, I used to lie on the floor of this loft, and read till the sun went down. But sometimes I had to bestride my horse, and take letters to the post, at the court-house; and here I frequented the abode of a Mrs. Grieve, the widow of a Highland captain, who came over in the troubles of ’45, and fell a victim to his insane fondness for the prince, having been shot in a duel with a young surgeon of Hanoverian sentiment.

Bless me! Do not think I was born at that time? Mrs. Grieve had been many years a widow. She liked me, and I liked Marion; and this was the reason of my being summarily shipped off to England, lest I should incur the burdens of matrimony. They say, I was what—in that part of the earth—is called a “likely” fellow; round-faced, hardy, broad-shouldered, and agile, but very shy, and full of gaucherie.

——