He
was a born Nimrod, and his father encouraged this propensity from the
earliest moment that his darling and only son could sit a pony, or
handle a light fowling-piece. Dutton, senior, was one of a then large
class of persons, whom Cobbett used to call bull-frog farmers; men
who, finding themselves daily increasing in wealth by the operation
of circumstances they neither created nor could insure or
control--namely, a rapidly increasing manufacturing population, and
tremendous war-prices for their produce--acted as if the chance-blown
prosperity they enjoyed was the result of their own forethought,
skill, and energy, and therefore, humanly speaking, indestructible.
James Dutton was, consequently, denied nothing--not even the luxury of
neglecting his own education; and he availed himself of the lamentable
privilege to a great extent. It was, however, a remarkable feature in
the lad's character, that whatever he himself deemed essential should
be done, no amount of indulgence, no love of sport or dissipation,
could divert him from thoroughly accomplishing. Thus he saw clearly,
that even in the life--that of a sportsman-farmer--he had chalked out
for himself, it was indispensably necessary that a certain quantum of
educational power should be attained; and so he really acquired a
knowledge of reading, writing, and spelling, and then withdrew from
school to more congenial avocations.
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