It would be a dreary task to follow the boy through all this youthful
misery, and so I will let it pass. Doubtless all these things brought
forth their fruits when his day of freedom came. He was a large-framed,
full-blooded boy, with more than the usual allowance of animal spirits.
But his father was larger framed and tougher, and in his occasional
contests with his son victory naturally perched upon his banners, so
that the boy's spirit (which rebelled alway against the iron rule of the
household), if not broken down, was certainly so far kept under that it
rarely showed itself. It was a slumbering volcano, ready, when it
reached its strength, to pour out burning lava of passion and
evil-doing.
Thus the boy grew up almost to manhood, with very few rays of sunshine
cast over his early path to look back upon when he should Teach the
middle eminence of life. And the gloom of the present cheerless and
austere way caused him to look forward with the more rapture to that
time, when, with his twenty-first birth-day, should come the power to do
as he pleased with himself: with his hours of labor and of ease, with
his Sabbath-days and his work-days.
A little before the time when big majority was to come and set him
partially free--for then, according to the good old Puritan custom, he
would have his 'freedom-suit,' and probably a few hundred dollars and a
horse, and might remain with his father or go elsewhere--there fell
across Jason's path a sweet gleam of golden sunshine, such as he had
never known before, nor ever dreamed of.
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