The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

I WAS bom in the town of Stockbridge, Windsor County, Vermont, September 16, 1803. My father was a native of Hartford County, Connecticut; my mother of the beautiful village of Keene, New Hampshire. At the age of six years I was placed with an aged couple in the town of Eoyalton to be brought up. The man, when I went to live with him, was upwards of sixty; his wife was about fifty. They were plain country people, living on a small farm, and supporting themselves by their own industiy. They had been brought up in New England Congregationalism^ were honest, upright, strictly moral, and far more ready to suffer wrong than to do wrong, but had no particular religion, and seldom went to meeting.

I was treated with great kindness and affection, and as well brought up as could be expected from persons in their condition of life. They taught me to be honest, to owe no one any thing but good will, to be frugal and industrious, to speak the truth, never to tell a lie under any circumstances, or to take what was not my own, even to the value of a pin; to keep the Sabbath, and never to let the sun go down on my wrath. In addition they taught me the Shorter Catechism, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and a short evening prayer in rhyme, which ran,