While still but a stripling he fell desperately in love with a
girl of thirteen; his affection for her was as constant as it was
romantic; through all his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased to
think of her, and after seven years she became his wife. His father
frowned on the engagement, and he became estranged from home. He was
impressed; narrowly escaped shipwreck, deserted, and was arrested and
flogged as a deserter. Released from the navy, he was taken into the
service of a slave-dealer on the coast of Africa, at whose hands, and
those of the man's negro mistress, he endured every sort of
ill-treatment and contumely, being so starved that he was fain
sometimes to devour raw roots to stay his hunger. His constitution
must have been of iron to carry him through all that he endured. In
the meantime his indomitable mind was engaged in attempts at
self-culture; he studied a Euclid which he had brought with him,
drawing his diagrams on the sand, and he afterwards managed to teach
himself Latin by means of a Horace and a Latin Bible, aided by some
slight vestiges of the education which he had received at a grammar
school.
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