system had been superseded by the founding of the Beech Woods Academy, in 1813. This institution did not fulfil the conditions of the act nor obtain its appropriation of $1,000 until 1816; but then the building was begun on the site set apart, the walls being carried up one story; and it was completed ready for service in 1820-just about in time for David's first lessons-under the principalship of Ephraim Torrey. "The Academy was a substantial brick building two stories. high, and accommodated two grades of pupils. Although the course of study was not extended, it was thorough and practical," says Mr. Mathews.

Thomas Fuller 5 taught there about 1820, and, in 1826 or thereabouts, L. C. Judson, the father of "Ned Buntline," was the principal. Torrey, Fuller and Judson were thus Wilmot's earliest schoolmasters.

The education received at Beech Woods was extended at the Cayuga Lake Academy, Aurora, New York-an institution established in 1798, soon after the first white settlements had been founded in that part of the country. "The fame of its principal of the 3o's [the time when Wilmot must have been matriculated at the Academy] still lives. He was Salem Town, LL.D., and was justly renowned both as a pedagogue and as the author of textbooks used widely about that time. He was also a prominent mason; the Commandery at Auburn bears his name. . . . The Academy flourished until about 1915, and was resurrected as a high school a few years later.

..

.. The records of the school in the early days are unfortunately lost-or were never kept-so that it would be im

Brother and successor of Amzi Fuller, who taught some years before in the frame schoolhouse and later went to Wilkes-Barre and attained peculiar distinction at the bar in that part of Pennsylvania. It is said that although he never held any judicial office, he was constantly consulted by the judges of the county courts on their difficult legal problems. It is probable that the tradition of this man influenced David Wilmot's imagination and his choice of a career, for he, too, went to Wilkes-Barre to prepare for the bar, and returned to Bethany to continue his studies with Thomas Fuller, on whom a corner of Amzi's mantle had fallen.

possible to trace the career of Wilmot in that way." A cousin, George Gustin (whose reminiscences on other points, however, where they can be positively checked, are curiously astray), says, "David was not a bad boy and had no vices, but he was the very spirit of mischief incarnate. Bright, active and alert mentally he abominated the very name of work." A more authoritative and specific estimate is recorded by his sister, Maria Wilmot Overton, in the letter already quoted. It is, perhaps, not inconsistent with Gustin's comment; but it is especially interesting because it suggests that even in boyhood David Wilmot showed a quality mentioned by several of those who knew him in later life-an extraordinary faculty for grasping and unraveling the essentials of a problem by a sort of intuition. Some modern psychologists might call it a peculiar power of utilizing his subconscious faculties. Mrs. Overton says:

After he (David) had been in school one month, his father wrote to the principal to learn how his son was progressing. He received the following reply: "Your son learns more in one day than any other pupil I have does in three, and I found out he was writing the compositions for nearly the whole school."

At eighteen, David left school, and, on May 15, 1832, he entered the law office of George W. Woodward (afterward president judge of the fourth district, Pennsylvania) at WilkesBarre. In some reminiscences contributed long after to the Titusville Advance Guard by Marinus N. Allen, then principal of the Wellsboro (Pa.) Academy, a part of young Wilmot's experience in this Wilkes-Barre law office is thus described:

Authorities had been placed in his hands for him to read and study. But he seemed to read very little and was apparently listless. He dressed without taste, and his appearance was very

6 Letter from Dr. Kerr D. Macmillan, President of Wells College, Aurora, N. Y. It may have been the ripening of a suggestion planted by Salem Town that led Wilmot to join the Lodge ten years later.

careless. . . . Finally, in his absence from the office, one of the partners asked the other:

"What is this young man, Wilmot, doing?"

"Nothing, so far as I can discover," was the reply. "He has. made a mistake in selecting his vocation. He will never make a lawyer."

"I agree with you, and it will be better to tell him that he has made a mistake. Such a fellow is not a credit to have around the office."

And so they decided to dismiss Wilmot as a law student. They concluded, however, that it would not be fair to discharge him without giving him an opportunity to vindicate his claims to be continued. They, therefore, notified him that at a given time they would examine his proficiency upon the subjects he had been reading. Wilmot received the word without the slightest demonstration of interest in the subject of the notice. In the intervening time before his examination he continued as listless as ever. appeared to be utterly insensible to the danger of his decapitation as a law student. . . .

He

When the time appointed for his examination came, he was on hand as careless in manner as ever. When called, he slouched into the private office of his preceptors, and took a seat as a matter of course. The lawyers seemed mercifully disposed, and at the beginning put to him questions simple and easy to answer. His answers, as expected, were correct. More difficult questions were answered as readily. Still more difficult ones were met and answered satisfactorily without apparent effort. The lawyers became astounded, and plied him with propositions abstruse and complicated-legal problems, which Wilmot promptly solved. Through all the quizzing he was as quiet and unconcerned and indolent in manner as had been his daily wont. After he had gone out, one of the partners remarked to the other:

"This man will know law, whether he learned it or not."

It is hardly necessary to say that Wilmot continued in that office until the time required by the rules of the bar permitted his admission.

It is true that he began and finished his studies in Woodward's office, and it was Judge Woodward who presented and

filed the necessary certificates and moved for the appointment of a committee to examine David Wilmot for admission to the bar, but there was an interregnum filled by study elsewhere. Late in 1832, Randall Wilmot sold the "tavern house and store" in Bethany, and bought a tract of 66 acres near Dimock, a hamlet about 6 miles from Montrose, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, preparatory to building a house and store thereon and moving his family and business to new surroundings. It was the first of a series of moves, each seemingly marked by a shrinking of activity and success, which ended with his days in Bozetta, Ohio; and they interlace with the personal story of David Wilmot, if that were to be intimately told, because at each step he appears to have taken up more of the burden his father could not carry.

The site Randall Wilmot chose at Dimock, or Woodbourne, as it is elsewhere called, was (like that at Bethany) on a great height of land; but here it was remote and isolated, with a far outlook to the south and west over hill ranges that suggest the color and contours of the sea. There are hints, in the scant surviving local traditions, that the move was not fortunate from a business point of view, and that Randall Wilmot had some trouble in carrying out his building plans; that, indeed, he never fully completed them. Four years later he sold out and was again on the move toward the near west. During the disturbed period of breaking up the household with its twenty years' accumulations in Bethany, making the 80-mile move by wagon to Susquehanna County, and settling in the new home, David merged his fortunes and plans with those of the family and adjusted his law studies accordingly. From May to November, 1833, according to the formal certificates filed in the prothonotary's office in Wilkes-Barre, he "studied the law with diligence and attention" in the office of Thomas Fuller, his former schoolmaster, at Bethany, boarding meanwhile with his uncle at $1.50 per week. A following certificate,

7 Continuance Docket, Common Pleas Court, Luzerne Co., Pa., No. 361, Aug., 1834.

from William Jessup, attorney at law, "certifys that Mr. David Wilmot studied the law with diligence and fidelity" in the office of the said Jessup for five months and four days, from the 2d day of December, 1833, until the 6th of May, 1834, at Montrose. And, on the 10th of May, 1834, the family being presumably as thoroughly settled at Dimock as they ever became, David is recorded as back in George Woodward's office in Wilkes-Barre, where he remained until admitted to the bar in the month of August following.

It is recorded in Emily Blackman's History of Susquehanna County that either during this spring, of 1834, or, more probably, while on a vacation visit to his home shortly afterwards, Wilmot was narrowly saved from drowning after a boating accident on the little neighboring forest-girt pond now known as Elk Lake. It cannot be imagined that the final outcome of the free-soil movement would have been greatly different, no matter what actors in it might have been dropped from the cast before the play began; but the political evolution by which the end was reached might have taken quite another course than that now recorded in history, if the introduction of the famous Proviso had been forestalled through the untimely death of a young law student named David Wilmot, on that summer day in the early 30's.

As it was, however, in much less dramatic fashion, the few months he actually spent in Dimock introduced a quiet constructive influence which, in Wilmot's own estimate, played a large part in shaping his political philosophy and inspiring his public career. A private library at Woodbourne "was opened to him, with its many books, especially the works of William Penn. Years afterwards he referred to the privilege he enjoyed there, as one that influenced his own principles in regard to human rights and thus indirectly at least eventuated in the Proviso." 8

Emily C. Blackman, History of Susquehanna County. In the Life of Galusha A. Grow, by James T. Du Bois and Gertrude S. Mathews, it is stated that "Wilmot often told Grow that at the library at Woodbourne