His intimacy with animals was of a very pleasant nature, except on one occasion, when he thrust his arm into a hollow tree, in search of squirrels, and pulled out a large black snake.  He was so terrified, that he tumbled headlong from the tree, and it was difficult to tell which ran away fastest, he or the snake.  This incident inspired the bold boy with fear, which he vainly tried to overcome during the remainder of his life.  There was a thicket of underbrush between his father’s farm and the village of Woodbury.  Once, when he was sent of an errand to the village, he was seized with such a dread of snakes, that before entering among the bushes, he placed his basket on an old rail, knelt down and prayed earnestly that he might pass through without encountering a snake.  When he rose up and attempted to take his basket, he perceived a large black snake lying close beside the rail.  It may well be believed that he went through the thicket too fast to allow any grass to grow under his feet.

When he drove the cows to and from pasture, he often met an old colored man named Mingo.  His sympathizing heart was attracted toward him, because he had heard the neighbors say he was stolen from Africa when he was a little boy.  One day, he asked Mingo what part of the world he came from; and the poor old man told how he was playing with other children among the bushes, on the coast of Africa, when white men pounced upon them suddenly and dragged them off to a ship.  He held fast hold of the thorny bushes, which tore his hands dreadfully in the struggle.  The old man wept like a child, when he told how he was frightened and distressed at being thus hurried away from father, mother, brothers and sisters, and sold into slavery, in a distant land, where he could never see or hear from them again.  This painful story made a very deep impression upon Isaac’s mind; and, though he was then only nine years old, he made a solemn vow to himself that he would be the friend of oppressed Africans during his whole life.

He was as precocious in love, as in other matters.  Not far from his home, lived a prosperous and highly respectable Quaker family, named Tatum.  There were several sons, but only one daughter; a handsome child, with clear, fair complexion, blue eyes, and a profusion of brown curly hair.  She was Isaac’s cousin, twice removed; for their great-grandfathers were half-brothers.  When he was only eight years old, and she was not yet five, he made up his mind that little Sarah Tatum was his wife.  He used to walk a mile and a half every day, on purpose to escort her to school.  When they rambled through the woods, in search of berries, it was his delight to sit beside her on some old stump, and twist her glossy brown ringlets over his fingers.  A lovely picture they must have made in the green, leafy frame-work of the woods—­that fair, blue-eyed girl, and the handsome, vigorous boy!  When he was fourteen years old, he wrote to her his first love-letter.