His surroundings, then, although neither refined nor elevating, were not unwholesome; but of the moral influences to which he was subjected, so much cannot be said, while the stock of piety that the original settlers brought with them had not entirely vanished.  There was much irregularity of life; few men gave any thought to religion, and young Jackson drifted with the tide.  Yet there was something that preserved him from contamination.  His uncle, kindest of guardians, though irreligious and a sportsman, was scrupulously exacting in matters of integrity and veracity.  His associates included the most respectable, yet the morals of the sporting fraternity of a frontier settlement are not likely to have been edifying.  That his nephew, as he himself declares, was an ardent frequenter of races, “house-raisings,"* (* Anglice, house-warmings.) and country dances is hardly surprising, and it is assuredly no ground whatever for reproach.  Nor is it strange that, amid much laxity, he should have retained his integrity, that his regard for truth should have remained untarnished, and that he should have consistently held aloof from all that was mean and vile.  His mother was no mere memory to that affectionate nature.

His good qualities, however, would scarcely of themselves have done more than raise him to a respectable rank amongst the farmers of West Virginia.  A spur was wanting to urge him beyond the limits of so contracted an existence, and that spur was supplied by an honourable ambition.  Penniless and dependent as he was, he still remembered that his ancestors had been distinguished beyond the confines of their native county, and this legitimate pride in his own people, a far-off reflection, perhaps, of the traditional Scottish attitude towards name and pedigree, exercised a marked influence on his whole career.  “To prove himself worthy of his forefathers was the purpose of his early manhood.  It gives us a key to many of the singularities of his character; to his hunger for self-improvement; to his punctilious observance, from a boy, of the essentials of gentlemanly bearing, and to the uniform assertion of his self-respect."* (* Dabney volume 1 page 29.)

1841.

It was his openly expressed wish for larger advantages than those offered by a country school that brought about his opportunity.  In 1841, at the age of seventeen, he became a constable of the county.  A sort of minor sheriff, he had to execute the decrees of the justices, to serve their warrants, to collect small debts, and to summon witnesses.  It was a curious office for a boy, but a year or two before he had been seized with some obscure form of dyspepsia, and the idea that a life on horseback, which his duties necessitated, might restore his health, had induced his relatives to obtain the post for him.  Jackson himself seems to have been influenced by the hope that his salary would help towards his education, and by the wish to become independent of his uncle’s