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Front matter

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Contents

I. — Thk Porter Pkdigrke i

My pedigree — -John Porter of Eyigland, and his descendants — My grandfather a?id his estate — Cotton and potatoes, an incident of boyish travel — General Waddy Thompson — From Georgetown to New IIave7i, Conn. — Yale students — Return to Georgetown — A strange presenthnent comes true — My sister Charlotte's fate — My mother asserts her authority — / suffer from bad teaching.

II. — RkIvIGious Beginnings ii

CHAPTER II RKlvIGIOUS BKGINNINGS

/ visit my father' s grave and vow to follow his good example — My life is saved by a negro — My brother* s death — I seek comfort iji the Bible for 7ny mother'' s absence — The good beginning of a life-long habit — I am catechised by Bishop Gadsden in m^y fourteenth year and am, confirmed.

I VIVIDLY remember the 31st of January, 1838, my tenth birthday, and how it was observed by me. I celebrated the day by going to the graveyard where my father was buried, in the cemetery attached to the old church of Prince George Winyah," Georgetown, South CaroHna, a church built of bricks brought from London. Climbing over the brick wall that encloses the graveyard, and going to the plot where my father's grave is, I knelt beside it, and putting my hands on the tombstone, thanked God for having given me such a father. In childish language I asked my Heavenly Father to spare my life so that I might grow up to be a man, and be able at my death to leave behind me a name as good as my father's. I asked that I might never do anything to bring a stain of dishonor upon that name. I was only a little boy, and no one told me to do it, but I seemed to be led to that hallowed spot, and to draw inspiration from it. The incident left an indeUble impression on my mind. I believe that

II even a child's prayer is heard, and I can venture to hope that my father would not be ashamed of his son, could he know what has been the manner of my life. Who can say that he does not know ? If it would add anything to the joys of Paradise, why may not our Heavenly Father let our dear dead know of the life of those whom they surely have not forgotten, and in whom they would delight if they were still on earth ? The spiritual world is much nearer to us than we can possibly conceive.

Another incident in my early life seemed to give the colored people of the South a claim on my life service. My life indeed was actually saved by a negro who risked his own for my safety. I felt I had incurred a debt which I was bound, and afterwards endeavored, to repay. The facts are as follows :

During the summer of 1839 I was taken in a small sailboat, by a party of young men, to fish on the banks between North and South Islands. In a sudden squall, the boat was capsized, and I was to all appearances drowned. I remember the side of the boat I was sitting on, gradually sunk into the water, as the boat turned over, but remember no more, until I found myself in the arms of a colored man, being carried from the beach to our house. When I came to consciousness he told me it was all right, not to be scared, that I was safe. We learned some time after that all the occupants of the boat got on the bottom, except myself. When this colored man missed me, he exclaimed, "O my God, where Miss Porter child?" Where ? Under the deep water being swept out to sea. Just then one of my little hands was seen stretched above the water. The colored man swam off from the boat, dived down, and came up with me in his arms, unconscious of course. I was held by him in his arms on the bottom of the boat until the party was rescued by some of the fishermen in other boats.

Religious Beginnings. 13

It was somewhere in the same year that my brother John returned from Morristown, of which I have already spoken. He went to Charleston, and entered the counting-house of Mr. George Y. Davis. He was then in his eighteenth year, and old enough to look into the affairs of my grandfather's estate. He found serious evidences of mismanagement, and in the fall of 1840 he left the counting-house and went to the two plantations to take charge of the interests of the estate. In August of 1841 there was a vSevere storm and heavy freshet, causing a large break in the river bank. The rice was at that stage that the broken bank had to be mended, or the crop would be lost. My brother, full of energy and resolve, took it in hand, and with all the force of slaves worked day and night, and succeeded in his efforts. His clothes were wet for many hours. When he had put the fields in order, he came down to North Island, at the mouth of Winyah Bay, to the family summer resort. But the deadly climate had done its work. Nine days after his wetting, he was taken with high bilious fever, or country fever, as it is known in this latitude, and on the fifth day he died, in his twentieth year. My mother was herself very sick at the same time and never saw him. I was standing by his bedside, and just before he died, he clasped his hands and said, * ' Conduct us, Heavenly Father, to Thy throne, and there kneeling let us praise Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

We took his body, on the loth of September, to Georgetown, and laid him beside our father, and the sister who had died in 1835. There were then left only two daughters and myself.

In the spring of 1839, my mother, still appreciating her own school experience in Elizabeth City, New Jersey, and being very fond of the North, and of Northern people, had taken my sister Eliza to New York and placed her at school at Bordentown, New Jersey, under the charge of Madam Murat, the wife of Achille Murat, the son of Napoleon's Marshal. Madam Murat was a Miss Fraser, of Charleston. There were no steamers running between Southern ports and New York in those days. The fate of the Home, which had been lost in a storm, and of the Pulaski, which had been burnt at sea with almost a total loss of passengers and crew, had put a temporary setback on steam navigation, and mother and my sister had sailed from Georgetown in a large brig. It was the first time I had ever been separated from my mother. Only nine months old when my father died, and a delicate child, I had been brought up with great tenderness, and was indeed very near to my mother. I recall to-day the anguish with which I watched that receding vessel, and my desolation when I went back home with my other sister, and a maiden aunt who was left in charge. She did all she could to comfort me, but I went supperless and sobbing to bed. I was only eleven years old. The next day I thought I must do something that would make God have pity on us, and carry our mother and sister safe, and bring them back. Going by sea to New York then seemed an awful thing. It certainly took longer to get there than it does now to get from here to lyondon, and there were no telegraphs, and only partial railroads, and it took a week to get a letter (postage twenty-five cents), so we knew it would be nearly a month before we could hear. To childish fancy it seemed an endless age. I had said my prayers, but it seemed I ought to do something more, and it occurred to me, although I knew the catechism, and had read some of the Bible, that I had never read it through, and I thought if I read it regularly, that God would know it, and somehow, it would have some influence on my mother's and sister's fate. So I shut myself up in my room and never came out of it all day until I had read

Religious Beginnings. 15

through the book of Genesis. Next day I read all of Exodus, next all of Leviticus, next all of Numbers. But the last two days had been rather tough on an urchin, eleven years old. So, when the next day came, I thought the half of Deuteronomy would do, and the balance on the sixth day. When I started again the seventh day I thought I would remember more if I took a little less, and I resolved to cut down to a chapter in the morning and a chapter at night. This became interesting to me, and after I had finished my self- allotted portion I used to read on when I felt so inclined, until I was tired. This habit begun at eleven years has been continued through life, with this improvement : soon after it was known that I was reading the Bible regularly, someone, perhaps my old aunt, took the Prayer Book, showed me the calendar, and pointed out to me that by following the Prayer Book lectionary one would read through in a year, excepting a few chapters, the Old Testament, the four accounts of the Gospel, the Acts of the Holy Apostles twice, and the Epistles four times. I immediately adopted the plan, and through boyhood, youth, manhood, and old age have kept it up. How many times I have thus read the Bible through, and how imperceptibly it has colored my thoughts and swayed my life ! In my childish ignorance, I thought God needed to be propitiated by my act, but for the blessed overruling of His Divine Spirit how often I have thanked God, who thus led me to take His Word as a lantern to my feet and a light to my path. How good a thing it would be if all young people would begin in early youth thus regularly to read the Bible. It would make their youth cleaner, and purer, and sweeter, yes, and happier.

My mother and sister had a safe and pleasant passage to New York, and the former returned to us in the fall.

In the spring of the year 1841, the rector of the church in Georgetown, the Rev. Robt. T. Howard, called at our home and asked me to take a stroll with him. In the course of our walk he told me that Bishop Gadsden had sent him notice of his intended visitation of the parish, and that he, the rector, wished me to give in my name for confirmation. I was only a child, just thirteen years old, and it was the first time the subject had been proposed to me. I expressed some hesitation to the rector, but he told me that as I knew the catechism, it was now my duty to be confirmed. I told him that I would give in my name if my mother approved of it. With my mother's approval, accordingly, I sent in my name, and that was the only conversation he had with me, and that was all the clerical instruction I received for preparation for this solemn step. I confess I knew nothing of the origin, or history, or obligations imposed in the rite, but I remember that after the suggestion had been made, and my mother had consented, I became very desirous to be confirmed, though I knew very little as to what it meant. Bishop Gadsden arrived, and on Saturday he took tea at our house, the rector being there also. During the evening I was brought in and introduced to the bishop as one of the candidates. He said, * ' Is not this child rather young ? ' '

He then began to catechize me. I was very much scared, but the catechism was one thing I was safe in. I could not have told who Nebuchadnezzar's grandfather was, or the names of Job's daughters, but I did know the catechism from beginning to end ; all of mother's children were drilled in that, and it had been the monthly custom of our former rector, Rev. P. T. Keith, who left us for Saint Michael's Church, Charleston, in 1839, to gather all the children round the chancel rail, and hear them say the catechism. There was no exposition of it given, but, expecting that monthly exercise in public, we all of us got

Religious Beginnings. 1 7

the words pretty thoroughly by heart, and were made Prayer Book Churchmen thereby.

So the bishop could not trip me ; I repeated it all, and he was so well pleased, that he said, ' ' I have a good report of you from your rector, and you certainly know the catechism remarkably well, and you can come forward."

So, on the i8th day of April, 1841, when I was thirteen years, two months, and eighteen days old, I was confirmed with eleven white candidates, and eight colored.* My youngest sister and m^^self were two of the twelve white. That service and that Sunday I shall never forget. I felt at the time that something great had been done.

When we returned to the house, I went into my room, and prayed a simple child's prayer, but I know it was very earnest. That day there began in me the desire and the purpose to study for the ministry. But after my confirmation, not one word was said to me by the rector. I did not know that I was expected, or had the right to, come forward to the Holy Communion. I just went on as before, saying my prayers, reading my Bible, going to church. I note in passing that mother always had family prayers, morning and evening; a sacred, blessed custom almost universal in those days — now, alas, almost universally neglected. As I look back to this event, I have often wondered if my experience was that of many others in the different parishes; no confirmation classes, no instruction, no following up. If so, what wonder that the church is full of members who know very little of her doctrine or history. I was confirmed in April, 1841. I never communed until Christmas Day, 1845, but of that I will speak further on.

* Miss Sarah Henning, of Georgetown, is the only white member of that class, beside myself, who is now alive.

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Chapter III

FIRST SCHOOI. EXPERIKNCB

Threatened disaster averted — Mr. Gates's school — I leave it shattered in health — Country leisure restores me — Good influences — I determine to become a communicant.

IN the spring of 1842, my mother took my second sister to Bordentown, to place her at school at Madam Murat's. My sister Eliza she brought home in the fall. During this fall a great trial came to us. I was too young to know how it came about, but it was evident that the mismanagement which caused it could not be laid to my mother's charge.

It came to light that the house which my father had built, and where all his children were born, the house which my mother supposed had been left secure to her, was, with all the silver and furniture, obliged to be sold, so that she was to be stripped of the last penny. There was nothing before us but to give up the town house, and live in the country in winter, and on the Island in the summer. My mother's support henceforth came out of the income allowed by the court for the expenses of my sisters and myself. It was a dreadful struggle and many an unhappy day and evening did my mother and I pass together. It was so hard to give up her home, bound to her by so many ties. Soon the house was advertised for sale, and we were waiting to be turned out of it. As we had a refuge on the plantation, no one had offered any help.

On the evening before the sale, we had our usual familyprayers and went to bed. I could not sleep from distress.

The light had been put out, and I was lying in bed, when I heard the buzzing of a fly. I listened for some time, and it annoyed me so much that I got out of bed and lit the candle. Up on the ceiling I saw a large flyentangled in a spider's web, and the old spider at a little distance off", looking on, ready at the right moment to make his fatal attack. The poor fly, by his desperate efforts to get out, was only making things worse. My sympathy was excited ; so getting on a chair and taking a stick, I managed to break the web and get the fly out. It shook itself vigorously, and flew off, while the spider beat a retreat and got beyond my reach. I went back to bed and began to think. If I was sorry for the fly, and let it out of its danger, would not God be sorry for the widow, and her fatherless children, who were all trying to be Christians, and would He not send somebody to let us out of the trap that a worse than spider had put us in ? I fell asleep.

Next day I went to the place of auction, and heard our house put up for sale — I, a poor boy of fourteen years, with a weeping widowed mother at home.

I heard someone say one thousand dollars — and the crier sang out, " One thousand dollars, one thousand dollars, one thousand dollars ! Is no more offered for this valuable property ? Once, twice, three times, — gone ! "

The auctioneer asked who the purchaser was ? A. W. Dozier, my father's old law partner, then came forward, and said he was the purchaser. The big tears rolled down my cheeks. Then the furniture and the silver were put up. Oh, the agony of that hour ! Someone bid ten dollars. I nearly fainted as it was all knocked down by this auctioneer. As I turned to leave the place Mr. Dozier came up to me and taking me by the arm, said, " I have bought the house and furniture in your name. Come and sign a paper at my office."

I was only a child, but the incident of the spider and the fly recurred to my mind, and I told him of it.

* ' God had not forgotten you, ' ' he replied ; ' ' but I had to keep quiet, lest if it had got out that I was going to buy the property in, someone might have run it up. But nobody made a bid. I wish I had bid one hundred dollars ; I could have got it at that, for everyone felt so much for your mother. Reading the agony on your face, no one would have bid a dollar against you. ' '

He advanced the money, and I, a boy of fourteen, gave him my personal bond for one thousand dollars, insured and assigned. I paid the interest and insurance out of my income ; the one thousand dollars in full a few days after coming of age.

I was now getting to be too old a boy to be kept at a small village school, and the question arose, where was I to go ? One of my sisters was at Morristown at school, but mother could not bring herself to send me so far away, as I was not strong.

In those days, Mr. Cotes, an Englishman, had the most promising school in that region of the country. He took a limited number of boarders. It was an expensive school, and resorted to only by the sons of people of property and position, so that it was necessary to enter a boy's name for a vacancy a year or two ahead. Mr. Cotes, happening to come up to Georgetown to visit Mr. William Bull Pringle, at his plantation, some six miles out of town, I was sent to him on my horse to have him enter my name. The old man had but one eye, and he struck me with terror the first time I saw him. I never did get over the terror and dislike with which the man inspired me. My name, however, was entered b}' hi.m for the next year, and I rode off wishing most sincerely that he had said he had no place for me. In those da3's the school term was for the whole 3^ear, saving the holiday in December and April. The poor children had to endure the drudgery of studying all through the summer months.

In May, 1842, I went down to Charleston, and was enrolled as a pupil with Mr. Cotes.

I never can forget a lesson I received the second day at dinner. I had helped myself as usual, when Mr. Cotes, at the head of the table, asked me if I was going to eat all that was on my plate ? Never having come in contact with such manners, I flushed up and felt indignant, and answered, I did not know whether I would or not. ' ' Well, ' ' he said, ' ' I will pass it over to-day, but henceforth help yoiurself to as much as you wish, but whatever you put on your plate you must eat. ' ' He entered into no explanations, and I was too angry to eat any more. The old man had a rough way, but reflection soon told me he was right. Whatever was left on the plates was wasted ; servants would not eat it, and he kept no dogs. There were some fourteen or fifteen boys at table ; if each of us left a good sized piece of butter on our plates, the aggregate of wasted butter would almost suffice for the next meal ; and so of everything else. Multiply each day's waste by the ten months, and it was clear our carelessness would be the cause of a dead loss. I have never forgotten that lesson, especially when, in after years, I had to provide for three hundred boys. Mr. Cotes' s first rebuke has been very efficacious in saving my pocket.

The next lesson I learned was from seeing in an outbuilding walls covered with all manner of vile scribblings. Brought up with the greatest care by my mother, with my sisters as my principal companions, I was innocent of that form of evil. This writing and those drawings were new to me, and with the perversity of human nature I looked at things I ought not to have seen, and read, although a great deal of what I read I did not understand ; but the effect was revolting to my moral sense. That lesson has served through thirty years to make me take care, as the head of a great boys' school, that no writing be permitted on any of the walls of the institution, a precaution quite as conducive to the morals of the boys of to-day as the lesson from wastefulness was to economical management.

I had not been long at Mr. Cotes' s school before I was attacked with nervous depression. When I went down to breakfast a great lump would rise in my throat, and I could not swallow a mouthful, even of coffee, and I would go to school weak and scared and miserable. I stood out the summer of 1842, and the winter of 1842-43, until September, 1843, when I was taken down with nervous fever, that soon became typhoid, and I was desperately ill.

My old doctor. Dr. Wm. T. Wragg, watched me devotedly, but told my mother that it had been brought on by my unhappiness at school, and when I recovered later, in October, he said, that to keep me longer at my books would be death to me. That I must go home and hunt, and fish, and ride, and not study for months.

Of course I was withdrawn at once from school, and taken to Georgetown. The country house was furnished, and I owned a riding horse. A fine gun, powder, shot, and a fishing outfit were purchased, and with a trusted man-servant in charge of me, I was sent alone into the country to carry out the doctor's directions. Nearly all negro women are good cooks, so orders were given that one of them should be brought from the fields to do my cooking. A supply of light reading was sent with me, and I was turned loose. As my sister was engaged to be married, it was not convenient for the whole family to join me in that country life which my mother always detested.

During the fever that nearly cost me my life, I had grown rapidly, and was now nearly six feet tall, as thin as a lathe. This overgrown lad of fifteen and a half was thus thrown on his own resources. It was the most injudicious thing I ever knew my mother to do in her rearing of me, yet she trusted me fully, and was unsuspicious of harm.

During that winter it became necessary, in some business arrangements, that I should read my grandfather's will, and there I learned that these two plantations and two thirds of the slaves would be mine at the age of twenty-one. As I roamed at large over these fields, several hundred acres of rice-land, and several thousand acres of pine-land, I came to the long village row of houses, occupied by the slaves. All of this I regarded as prospectively mine. To a boy the acres seemed endless, and the slaves numberless, and the negro village a little town. A rice-pounding mill, barns, cattle, hogs, horses, mules, farm utensils, filled my imagination, and I remember how, as the impression grew of what was mine, the desire and purpose to study for the ministry became gradually weaker, until at last it died away. I was enjoying the foretaste of a free Southern planter's life, and it had its own attractions. But I was alone, with no companions, perfectly unrestrained, a man in stature, a boy in age and experience, with fast- returning vigor and strength, conditions around me offering many temptations to sin, and memory recalls some three or four occurrences that I know have been blotted out of God's book of remembrance, but which, though he has repented of them, one never forgets.

The latter part of April, when it was no longer safe to remain on a rice plantation, saw me returned to town quite restored to health. But from September to May my books had been utterly neglected. I had read a good deal, but chiefly light literature — all of Scott's novels and manyrothers, a little history, and a good part of Shakespeare's plays ; but I had pursued no serious study. My Bible reading was never intermitted one day, but for that what might I not have done, or what might I not have been ? I remember that the question of the renewal of my studies seemed to be an open one, but I told my mother that I would not consent to give up my schooling ; I had the means, I said ; I was still young — it was then the spring of 1844, and I had reached my sixteenth year on the 31st of the previous January. I had still five years before my majority, and what was I to do with those five years ? To school I would go, but where ? Nothing could have induced me to return to Mr. Cotes' s, and Doctor Wragg urged that I be sent to the interior, as best for my health. Mount Zion Academy, or College, as it was called at Winnsborough, under Mr. G. W. Hutson, was selected ; so I packed up, and started on the steamer Anson, a small river steamer that plied between Georgetown and Charleston.

On the boat I met Mr. Thos. Pinckney Alston, who gave me a letter of introduction to his son Charles, then a student in the South Carolina College. Mr. Alston's son William had been a classmate of mine at Mr. Cotes' s school. It was Friday, the 2d of June, 1844, that I got on board the train in Charleston, at seven o'clock in the morning, and it took all day, till near six in the afternoon, to make the one hundred and thirty-six miles to Columbia. That was the rapid transit of those days, fiftythree years ago. On Saturday I went up to the South Carolina College, and presented to Mr. Charles Alston my letter of introduction from his father. He was courteously kind and showed me everything about the college, and finally took me to his room. There he went through his private store of books, and one set he pointed to as specially his choice set. He was a devout, earnest Churchman, and I remember Kirke White's poems, The Imitation, by Thomas a Kempis, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Sutton's How to Live and How to Die, and other books of that stamp, and I left him very much impressed.

He invited me to take a seat in his pew at Trinity Church, Columbia, of which Doctor Shand was then the venerable rector. It was on Trinity Sunday, June 4, 1844, that I sat with Christopher Gadsden, Charles Alston, and three others in the pew. There was a celebration of the Holy Communion, and all these young collegians remained, and I came out.