Youth
Henry James Sr. was one of twelve children. At the age of thirteen, he was severely burned trying to stamp out a fire in a barn, and lost a leg to amputation. The three years he was bedridden reinforced his studious disposition. He entered Union College in 1828 and graduated in 1830. His father, a stern Presbyterian, disapproved of his religious ideas, but when the patriarch's will was broken he became an independently wealthy man. He studied at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1835 to 1837 to prepare for the ministry, but found himself disconcerted by "enormous difficulties which inhered in its philosophy," and abandoned the idea of becoming a minister.
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“A youth in apparel that glittered
Went to walk in a grim forest.
There he met an assassin”
—Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
“Sprung from the West,
He drank the valorous youth of a new world.
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind,
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul.
His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts
Were roots that firmly gript the granite truth.”
—Edwin Markham (1852–1940)