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Our hero was, at an early age, put to a grammar school of good repute,
in his native village, and, at seventeen, was sent to Princeton, to
prepare himself for some profession; during his third year at that
place, in one of his excursions to Philadelphia, he became enamoured
"with one of those faces and forms, which, in a youth of twenty, to
see, admire, and love, is one and the same thing;" and was united to
the object of his affections, on the anniversary of his twenty-first
year. This event gave him a distaste for serious study; and, long
before this, he had felt a sentiment, bordering on contempt, for
mercantile pursuits; he therefore prevailed upon his father to
purchase him a neat country seat in the vicinity of Huntingdon. Here,
seventeen happy years glided away swiftly and imperceptibly, when
death, by depriving him of the partner of his felicity, prostrated all
his hopes and enjoyments. For the purpose of seeking for that relief
to the feelings, which variety can best afford, he now determined to
make a voyage; and, as one of his father's vessels was about to sail
for Canton, embarked on board of her, and left Sandyhook on the 5th
day of June, 1822. From this period, until the 24th of October, their
voyage was comparatively agreeable; but when off the mouths of the
Ganges, one of those hurricanes, well known to the experienced
navigators of the eastern seas, struck the ship, and rendered her so
leaky, that the captain considered it advisable to make for the
nearest port; the leak, however, increasing rapidly, and finding
themselves off a coast, which the captain, by his charts, pronounced
to be a part of the Burman empire, and in the neighbourhood of Mergui,
on the Martaban coast, they hastily threw their clothes, papers, and
eight casks of silver, into the long-boat; and, before they were fifty
yards from the ship, had the melancholy satisfaction to see her go
down.
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