He was
both a ready talker and appreciative listener. By virtue of his tall
stature and unusual strength of sinew and muscle, he was from the
beginning a leader in all athletic games; by reason of his studious
habits and his extraordinarily retentive memory he quickly became the
best story-teller among his companions. Even the slight training he
gained from his studies greatly quickened his perceptions and broadened
and steadied the strong reasoning faculty with which nature had endowed
him.
As the years of his youth passed by, his less gifted comrades learned to
accept his judgments and to welcome his power to entertain and instruct
them. On his own part, he gradually learned to write not merely with the
hand, but also with the mind--to think. It was an easy transition for
him from remembering the jingle of a commonplace rhyme to the
constructing of a doggerel verse, and he did not neglect the opportunity
of practising his penmanship in such impromptus. Tradition also relates
that he added to his list of stories and jokes humorous imitations from
the sermons of eccentric preachers. But tradition has very likely both
magnified and distorted these alleged exploits of his satire and
mimicry. All that can be said of them is that his youth was marked by
intellectual activity far beyond that of his companions.
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