Soon after the death of Dr. Douglass, his widow removed to the farm which she and her unmarried brother had inherited from her father.  The children grew to love this bachelor uncle with almost filial affection.  Too young to take thought for the morrow, they led the wholesome, natural life of country children.  Stephen went to the district school on the Brandon turnpike, and had no reason to bemoan the fate which left him largely dependent upon his uncle’s generosity.  An old school-mate recalls young Douglass through the haze of years, as a robust, healthy boy, with generous instincts though tenacious of his rights.[5] After school hours work and play alternated.  The regular farm chores were not the least part in the youngster’s education; he learned to be industrious and not to despise honest labor.[6]

This bare outline of a commonplace boyhood must be filled in with many details drawn from environment.  Stephen fell heir to a wealth of inspiring local traditions.  The fresh mountain breezes had also once blown full upon the anxious faces of heroes and patriots; the quiet valleys had once echoed with the noise of battle; this land of the Green Mountains was the Wilderness of colonial days, the frontier for restless New Englanders, where with good axe and stout heart they had carved their home plots out of the virgin forest.  Many a legend of adventure, of border warfare, and of personal heroism, was still current among the Green Mountain folk.  Where was the Vermont lad who did not fight over again the battles of Bennington, Ticonderoga, and Plattsburg?

Other influences were scarcely less formative in the life of the growing boy.  Vermont was also the land of the town meeting.  Whatever may be said of the efficiency of town government, it was and is a school of democracy.  In Vermont it was the natural political expression of social forces.  How else, indeed, could the general will find fit expression, except through the attrition of many minds?  And who could know better the needs of the community than the commonalty?  Not that men reasoned about the philosophy of their political institutions:  they simply accepted them.  And young Douglass grew up in an atmosphere friendly to local self-government of an extreme type.

Stephen was nearing his fourteenth birthday, when an event occurred which interrupted the even current of his life.  His uncle, who was commonly regarded as a confirmed old bachelor, confounded the village gossips by bringing home a young bride.  The birth of a son and heir was the nephew’s undoing.  While the uncle regarded Stephen with undiminished affection, he was now much more emphatically in loco parentis.  An indefinable something had come between them.  The subtle change in relationship was brought home to both when Stephen proposed that he should go to the academy in Brandon, to prepare for college.  That he was to go to college, he seems to have taken for granted.  There was a