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and I stood head in spelling all the time, not having
been turned down once. But my time was in
a great measure thrown away. The only school book
in those days was Dilworths Spelling book, and the
Bible & Testament. What a change in 50 years!!
As soon as a boy was old enough he was put to "cyphering."
I "cyphered" thro' Delworths arithmetic
at least twice & wrote down every sum, & copied every
rule into my cyphering book, filling several [quire?]
of paper. When I removed from Kentucky, I left
it in Winchester; which I now very much regret
as I should like for my young children to see &
know what I had done, when a man child.
I wrote a neat hand for a little boy, and at
the age of about eleven, my father took me
to Lexington, with a view of getting me into the
store of William Scasy, a highly respectable
Scotch merchant, but he objected to my size & I returned
home. Altho' I was industrious, I did not
want to be a farmer - wanted to be something
else - tho' I hardly knew what. About the last
of May 1798, my brother Benjamin, understanding
from Capt. David Bullock, Clerk of Clarke County, Kentucky,
that he wanted a boy to write in his office, immediately
dispatched a messenger to my father's to notify
him of the fact, and I was sent the next day to my
brother's residence, & I was taken by him the next day
(1st Monday in June) to the house of Capt. Bullock,
(where the office was then kept near the Grassy lick
road, one mile North East of Winchester. I found
Capt. B. a plain, sensible, well educated, & very
stern old Virginia Gentleman; he had been a Captain
in the Revolutionary War, & was a first rate
Clerk - wrote with more rapidity than any
person, I ever saw. I have heard him say, he had written
a quire of paper in a day. He was at the
time Clerk of the quarter session & County Court
of Clarke County, the two offices being very lucrative;
tho' at the time he was appointed, Clerk (June 1792)
he must have been in very poor, & they loved poor