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CHAPTER IV.

Blaine's Childhood.-His birth at West Brownsville.-His father. His mother. His play.-His childish shrewdness.-His Attendance at the Catholic Church.-The oppositon of the Catholic priest to his father.-His studies.

Genius has no pedigree, no parents, no children. The possessor cannot tell how he came by it, and cannot transmit it to others. Mr. Blaine's traits of character, which have made him a statesman and a leader, are peculiar to himself, and differ widely from those of his father, and are like those of no other person whose biography it has been our privilege to write or to study. Some of his old neighbors give all the credit to his mother's influence, and with traditional stories of her prophetic foresight, claim that she laid the foundations, securely and wisely, of that comprehensiveness and exactness of mental capacity which has carried him successfully through the great trials of his life. Some of his schoolmates say that it was the skill of his instructors, who happened, from his father to the college graduation, to be gifted men in imparting just the knowledge necessary, and insisting upon first the discipline adapted to the cultivation of cool and strong statesmanlike character. Some of the sages in the science of human nature say it was due to the natural surroundings of his youth. To the deep and ceaselessly rolling river, on whose shaded banks he played as a child, into whose solemnly moving floods he tossed the dark pebbles, and whose destructive power in the

freshet season startled his developing mind into preternatural channels. One claims it was the wild forest and the ragged scenery of the unsettled landscape, and note, in proof of it, the supposed effect of a like wilderness upon Clay, Calhoun, Douglas, and Lincoln.

But other men have had mothers as foreseeing and as devoted, even if the traditions concerning her extraordinary prophesies be true, and many of them remain ordinary and commonplace in character and position.

Colleges make no great men. An educated idiot will never make a statesman, notwithstanding the American notion that the possession of a diploma should entitle any simpleton to a place in our social aristocracy. The great, active, relentless, human world gives a man a place of real influence, and crowns him as truly great for what he really is, and will not care a fig for any college certificate. The questions which the great, busy world asks concerning the claimant to their confidence are what does he know? and what can he do? It has no concern in the course or manner in which that knowledge or power was obtained. If a man obtain as much learning out of college, it is just as valuable to him as it would be if he had been taught it in college. If he has natural genius it will show itself. If he has it not, education will not create it. Study like that of Webster and Greeley, by New Hampshire pine knots, and like Garfield's, by a wood pile, are the outgrowth of genius. Like the mysterious power of dynamite, it cannot be confined, where there is the least friction. Like giant powder it bursts every bond, however adamantive, and, like love, it laughs at castle walls.

Scenery however grand or strange does not create genius. The Monongahela flows by many a farm and receives thousands of daily contributions in the shape of pebbles from the plowboys on its shores; but its eternal song and its un

fathomed mysteries are unheard or misunderstood. Woodlands stretch away from many a childhood's home; mountains mighty and snow-capped frown or glitter above many cottages where neither greatness nor real genius can be found. The student of history sees that inherited disposition influences the character, that early training may give a bias to the mind, that education always enobles, and that grand scenery has some strange agency in the unfolding of the best characteristics of human nature. But that inspired impulse and intuitive insight, called genius, cannot be accounted for by such influences nor fathomed by any known system of human philosophy. While the life of Blaine shows the value of education, industry, perseverance, integrity, and humanity, and that no barriers can be set up to withstand the march of the truly great, it also teaches us the importance of leaving the child and man in whom unusual intellectual qualities are developing, free to choose any honorable calling untrameled by parental prejudices or social pride. Neither Washington nor Napoleon could learn the classics, while Walter Scott, Lord Clive and Milton, it is said, were not capable of learning anything during their early childhood. When left to themselves and all artificial restraints removed, their genius developed in entirely unexpected directions. Blaine was a real genius. He had exceptional mental capabilities and inclinations. Unconsciously to himself, he moved onward toward political influence as a stream let loose by the sunshine on some glacier, creeps forward, flowing around trees and about boulders, hindered at times by rubbish and often stayed by unusual eminences, but at last rolling onward into the wide plains an irresistable river, deep, mysterious, sublime.

James Gillespie Blaine, the subject of this biography, was born January 31st, 1829. His father, Ephraim L. and his mother, Maria Gillespie, still lived in their new two

storied house on the banks of the Monongahela. No portentious events, either in nature or public affairs, marked his advent. A few neighbors, with generous interest and sympathy extended their aid and congratulations. The tops of the hills and the distant Alleghanies were white with snow, but the valley was bare and brown, and the swollen river swept the busy ferry-boat from shore to shore with marked emphasis, as old acquaintances repeated the news of the day, "Blaine has another son."

Another soul clothed in humanity; another cry; increased care in one little home. That was all. It seems so sad now in this the day of his fame and power, that the mother who with such pain and misgiving, prayer and noble resolutions saw his face for the first time, should now be sleeping in the churchyard. In the path that now leads by her grave she had often paused before entering the shadowy gates of the weatherbeaten Catholic church and calmed her anxious fears, that she might devoutly worship God and secure the answer to her prayer for her child.

It seems strange now, in the light of other experiences, that no tradition or record of a mother's prophecy concerning the future greatness of her son comes down to us from that birthday, or from his earliest years. But the old European customs and prejudices of her Irish and Scottish ancestry seem to have lingered with sufficient force to still give the place of social honor and to found the parents' hopes on the First-born. To all concerned it was a birth of no special significance. Outside the family it was a matter of no moment. Births were frequent. The Brownsville public heard of it and passed on to forget, as a ripple in the Monongahela flashes on the careless sight for a moment, then the river rolls on as before. Ephraim Blaine was proud of another son, the little brother and the smaller sister gleefully hailed a new brother. The mother, with a deep joy

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EARLY LIFE OF MR. BLAINE.-THE VILLAGE AND CHURCH, BROWNSVILLE, PA.

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