his master and gone to sea. Lloyd, poor little
homesick Lloyd, was the only consolation left the
broken heart. And he did not want to live in
Baltimore, and longed to return to Newburyport.
So, mindful of her child’s happiness, and all
unmindful of her own, she sent him from her to Newburyport,
which he loved inexpressibly. He was now in his
eleventh year. Very happy he was to see once
more the streets and landmarks of the old town—the
river, and the old house where he was born, and the
church next door and the school-house across the way
and the dear friends whom he loved and who loved him.
He went again to live with the Bartletts, doing with
his might all that he could to earn his daily bread,
and to repay the kindness of the dear old deacon and
his family. It was at this time that he received
his last scrap of schooling. He was, as we have
seen, but eleven, but precious little of that brief
and tender time had he been able to spend in a school-house.
He had gone to the primary school, where, as his children
tell us, he did not show himself “an apt scholar,
being slow in mastering the alphabet, and surpassed
even by his little sister Elizabeth.” During
his stay with Deacon Bartlett the first time, he was
sent three months to the grammar-school, and now on
his return to this good friend, a few more weeks were
added to his scant school term. They proved the
last of his school-days, and the boy went forth from
the little brick building on the Mall to finish his
education in the great workaday world, under those
stern old masters, poverty and experience. By
and by Lloyd was a second time apprenticed to learn
a trade. It was to a cabinetmaker in Haverhill,
Mass. He made good progress in the craft, but
his young heart still turned to Newburyport and yearned
for the friends left there. He bore up against
the homesickness as best he could, and when he could
bear it no longer, resolved to run away from the making
of toy bureaus, to be once more with the Bartletts.
He had partly executed this resolution, being several
miles on the road to his old home, when his master,
the cabinetmaker, caught up to him and returned him
to Haverhill. But when he heard the little fellow’s
story of homesickness and yearning for loved places
and faces, he was not angry with him, but did presently
release him from his apprenticeship. And so the
boy to his great joy found himself again in Newburyport
and with the good old wood-sawyer. Poverty and
experience were teaching the child what he never could
have learned in a grammar-school, a certain acquaintance
with himself and the world around him. There was
growing within his breast a self-care and a self-reliance.
It was the autumn of 1818, when, so to speak, the
boy’s primary education in the school of experience
terminated, and he entered on the second stage of his
training under the same rough tutelage. At the
age of thirteen he entered the office of the Newburyport
Herald to learn to set types. At last his