"His father died yonder, within a stone's throw of us, when the son was but a year and a half old.

He knew no other father than mine, who watched over the family as if it had been his own.

This very house in which I live was as much his home as it was mine.
"Over there," said he, pointing to the brick school-house in the grove of maples, around which the happy children were playing, "is where he and I both started for school.

I have read a statement that he could not read or write until he was nineteen.

He could do both before he was nine, and before he was twelve, so familiar was he with the Indian history of the country, that he had named every tree in the orchard, which his father planted as he was born, with the name of some Indian chief, and even debated in societies, religion, and other topics with men.