Hosea Ballou; A Marvellous Life-Story (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1888. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... XXIV. CHARACTER; FAITH; INFLUENCE. " T)ITT it on the titlepage," said an interested friend -*- to us, before we had touched pen to paper on the inviting task which now nears its completion. We had been speaking to him of Hosea Ballou's mission. We had said, " The story, simply in its human aspect, is marvellous." Our friend's advice was unpremeditated. It may have since entirely passed from his remembrance. But it has survived in our recollection, and its justness, tested by patient consideration, has compelled its fulfilment. Not unadvisedly nor hastily have we made for the subject of our biography the claim implied in our titlepage. Hosea Ballou was not, as the reader scarcely need be told, in any sense a prodigy appealing to a credulous curiosity. He was not an exceptional genius approaching the miraculous. No such claim is made for him. The story of his career will not captivate a crude imagination. His adventures were not visible; his striving was not for fame. For such a hero we can covet no shallow triumph or belated laurels. Yet Hosea Ballou's life-story is marvellous. Wonderful in contrast with his hindrances is the work he wrought. Motherless from infancy; the poverty of his early home so pitiable that no shoes could be bought for him through the long winters; precocious in nothing save in the share he took in the hard toil which won the family's scanty bread from the reluctant soil; without books save a Babel-tower pamphlet, an antiquated almanac, an antique dictionary, and the ever-fresh Bible; learning to read by the light of pine-knots on winter evenings, and to write on the birch-bark he had gathered in scrolls from the forest; with no lesson at school till after he was nineteen, and his entire school-advantages compassed by a few weeks, -- such ...