urt was that they two--the slave and the
guest--were brothers, so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty
drew young John to 'swear eternal war with slavery.' That vow, never
recanted or forgotten, became the text of his life. It interprets all
his vagaries and reconciles what else were hopeless inconsistencies. It
was a devout obsession which made him a wanderer all his days, and in
the end carried him to prison and to death. To a child a great call
had come, and a child's voice had replied, 'Speak, Lord, Thy servant
heareth.' And ears and heart tingled at messages that seemed to come
from the Unseen.

CHAPTER III

THE LONG WAITING-TIME

For over thirty years did this man both 'hope and quietly wait for the
salvation of the Lord' to come for the slaves of his land. The
interval is full of interest for those who care to watch the
development of a life-purpose. Only for three, or four years was he
destined to figure in the eyes of the world. Those years, as we shall
hereafter see, were crowded with events; but for a generation he felt
an abiding conviction of impending destiny.

There is something fateful about the constant indications of this
spirit of readiness. His commercial pursuits were multifarious, but
none of them was greatly successful. At Hudson, Ohio, till 1825, and
afterwards at Richmond, Pennsylvania, he was tanner, land-surveyor, and
part of the time postmaster. He became skilful at his father's
business of tanning, but is a typical Yankee in the facility with which
he turns his hand to anything.

From 1835 to 1839 he was at Franklin, Ohio, where we find him adding to
his former occupations the breeding of horses, and also dabbling in
land speculation, with the result that he became bankrupt. But when he
failed in business he set to work to pay his debts in full. His death
found him still striving to achieve that end. He was regarded as
whimsical and stubborn, yet through years of struggle, endeavour, and
even failure he was known as trusty and honourable.

From 1841 to 1846 he lived at Richfield, Ohio, where he took to
shepherding and wool-dealing, which he continued in 1849 at
Springfield, Massachusetts. He seems to have developed much capacity
for wool-testing. When he came to England with a cargo of wool, some
English dealers sought to practise a fraudulent joke upon his quick
fingers. They stripped a poodle of the best of his fleece and handed
it to the oracular Yankee