Mr. Jackson was what used to be termed a poor man. He and his father
before him, as Hesden knew, had lived on a little, poor plantation,
surrounded by wealthy neighbors. They owned no slaves, and lived,
scantily on the products of the farm worked by themselves. The
present occupant was about Hesden's own age. There being no free
schools in that county, and his father having been unable, perhaps
not even desiring, to educate him otherwise, he had grown up almost
entirely illiterate. He had learned to sign his name, and only
by strenuous exertions, after his arrival at manhood, had become
able, with difficulty, to spell out words from the printed page
and to write an ordinary letter in strangely-tangled hieroglyphics,
in a spelling which would do credit to a phonetic reformer. He
had entered the army, probably because he could not do otherwise,
and being of stalwart build, and having great endurance and native
courage, before the struggle was over had risen, despite his
disadvantages of birth and education, to a lieutenancy.
This experience had been of advantage to him in more ways than one.
Chief among these had been the opening of his eyes to the fact that
he himself, although a poor man, and the scion of a poor family,
was, in all the manly requisites that go to make up a soldier,
always the equal, and very often the superior, of his aristocratic
neighbors.
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