some vague speculations in the family concerning what seemed to be
special adaptability to the work of preaching. Shortly after I gave that
up to enlist in the Continental Army, under Gen. Francis Marion, and no
other soldier slew more Britons. After discharge I at once volunteered
in an Indiana regiment quartered in my native town in Kentucky, and beat
the snare drum at the head of that fine body of men for a long time. But
the tendency was downward. For three months I was chief of a of robbers
that ravaged the backyards of the vicinity. Successively I became a spy
for Washington, an Indian fighter, a tragic actor.

With character seared, abandoned and dissolute in habit through and
by the hearing and seeing and reading of history, there was but one
desperate step left So I entered upon the career of a pirate in my ninth
year. The Spanish Main, as no doubt you remember, was at that time upon
an open common across the street from our house, and it was a hundred
feet long, half as wide and would average two feet in depth. I have
often since thanked Heaven that they filled up that pathless ocean in
order to build an iron foundry upon the spot. Suppose they had excavated
for a cellar! Why during the time that Capt. Kidd, Lafitte and I
infested the coast thereabout, sailing three "low, black-hulled
schooners with long rakish masts," I forced hundreds of merchant seamen
to walk the plank--even helpless women and children. Unless the sharks
devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of
that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost promontory, near
a rock marked with peculiar crosses made by the point of the stiletto
which I constantly carried in my red silk sash, I buried tons of plate,
and doubloons, pieces of eight, pistoles, Louis d'ors, and galleons by
the chest. At that time galleons somehow meant to me money pieces in
use, though since then the name has been given to a species of boat. The
rich brocades, Damascus and Indian stuffs, laces, mantles, shawls and