"As I was a-reading
here--a man is what his thoughts make him. Be he Catholic or Church
Protestant or Baptist, he's what he's o' mind to be, good or bad. Other
folk's say-so don't stop him--no more than them badgers' worryin' dams
the brook."
This was a new idea to Will. His hunger for books was so keen that it
had seemed to him that without them, he would be stupid as the swine.
John Smith seemed to understand it, for he added,
"You bide here with me awhile, lad. Maybe there's a way for you to get
learning, yet."
Will shared the leafy booth and simple fare of his new friend for a
fortnight, doing errands, rubbing down the black horse, Tamlane, and at
odd times learning his conjugations. When John Smith left his hermitage
and went to fight against the Turks in Transylvania, he placed a little
sum of money with a Puritan scholar at Scrooby to pay for the boy's
schooling for a year or two. The yeoman uncle had a family of his own to
provide for, and was glad to have Will off his hands.
Transylvania in 1600 was on the very frontier of Christendom. John Smith
needed all the philosophy he had learned from his favorite author when,
after many adventures, he was taken prisoner and sent to the
slave-market of Axopolis to be sold. Bogal, a Turkish pacha, bought the
young Englishman to send as a gift to his future wife, Charatza
Tragabigzanda, in Constantinople.
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