516 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS education with energy for several years, until an accident cost him the use of his left hand. He seems to have given up a musical career without any regret. In fact it is entirely possible that he was tiring of the art and glad to drop it. His education was entirely in the hands of private tutors. He spent four years at the Academy of the Diocese of Penn- sylvania in Philadelphia under the instruction of Dr. G^rge Emlin Hare. He developed a taste for literature, and Ids early writings show that the great essayists of the G^rgian Era of English Literature had a decisive influence on him* We can only surmise what would have been the result had he been permitted, as Edmund Burke and Washington Irving were, to spend years of leisure in the company and enjoy- ment of these literary masters. Washington City at that time was the meeting point of aU the currents of American life. With his knowledge of all these currents, with his intimate acquaintance with all the characters who then visited annually the cosmopolitan capital^ and with Washington society as a background, what might he not have hoped for in the way of a literary career ! Young Watterson also showed decided talent as a critic of the stage. He frequently wrote for the press. These brief articles leave no doubt that had he given his time and energy to work along this line he would have taken rank with Lowell or Poe as a critic. But these and other early adventures only show the versatility of his genius. He could have made his mark in any field to which he might have given his atten- tion. These activities were, moreover, all parts of an educa- tion that was unconsciously fitting him for a career which was to be of inestimable benefit to the nation, and there was no sentiment which so completely commanded his life as pa- triotism. While the young man was thus casting about, following first one inclination and then another, a political crisis was fast coming upon the nation. The Civil War broke out and, dur- ing the year in which Watterson became of age, completely and forever shattered that society with which he had become
