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Show EARLY LIFE OF PAUL JONES. He Came te America to Inherit an Estate In Tirjrlul. There is no record of his having attended at-tended any school except that of the parish of Kirkbean, but he developed a truly Scotch passion for reading and writing. He went to sea when 12 years old and made two voyages during bis minority in a slaver, bat hating the traffic he left it and the ship too. At 20 he was in command of a fine brigantina About this time occurred what he oalls, in a letter to Robert Morris, "a great misfortune," adding, "lam under no concern whatever that this or any other circumstance of my past life will sink me in your opinion. " The trouble was a threatened criminal prosecution for having had a carpenter flogged, which was the usual mode of punishment in those days. The matter was investigated, investigat-ed, and Paul Jones was fully acquitted. It is worthy of remark that the magistrate mag-istrate who inquired into that mattei-notes mattei-notes that Paul Jones expresseu great sorrow for having had the man flogged, although the charge of cruelty was fully disproved. He returned to Scotland once after this, and although affectionately received by his own family his friends and neighbors seem to have treated him coldly. The snjprt from this injustice turned the fndifeerence he felt for hia native land into hatred, and ever after he considered himself quite free from any responsibility for having been born and having spent the first 12 years of his life in so inhospitable a country. In his twenty-seventh year a great and fortunate change occurred to him. His brother William, who had emigrated emigrat-ed to Virginia and died there, left him an estate. There is no doubt that Paul Jones was often afterward in want of ready money, but it must be remembered remem-bered that everybody was in want of ready money in the eighteenth century. Certain it is, from his papers preserved at Washington, that he might be considered consid-ered at the beginning of the war a man of independent fortune. The two years of his life in Virginia are obscure, as might be expected from a man living the life of a provincial country gentleman, which the records concerning him prove. At the outbreak of war with the mother country Paul Jones hastened to Philadelphia, and through Mr. Joseph Hewes, a member of congress from North Carolina, got his commission as senior first lieutenant in the infant navy of the colonies. It was then he made the acquaintance of Robert Morris, to whom he felt a passionate pas-sionate gratitude and affection, and whom he named as sole execntcr in his will, Mr. Hewes being then dead. Miss Molly Elliot Seawell in Century. |