Back in the mountains he had but little opportunity to attend school,
and his sentences were framed in the quaint construction of his people,
and nearly all of them were ungrammatical. There were many who would
have regarded him as ignorant. By the standards that hold that education
is enlightenment that comes from acquaintance with books and that wisdom
is a knowledge of the ways of the world, he was. But he had a training
that is rare; advantages that come to too few.
From his father he inherited physical courage; from his mother, moral
courage. And both of them spent their lives developing these qualities
of manhood in their boy. His father hiked him through the mountains on
hunts that would have stoutened the heart of any man to have kept the
pace. And he never tolerated the least evidence of fear of man or beast.
He taught his boy to so live that he owed apology or explanation to no
man.
While I was at Pall Mall, one of his neighbors, speaking of Alvin, said:
"Even as a boy he had his say and did his do, and never stopped to
explain a statement or tell what prompted an act. Left those to stand
for themselves."
And the little mother, whose frail body was worn from hard work and
wracked by the birth of eleven children, was before him the embodiment
of gentleness, spirit and faith.
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