The intimate papers of Colonel House arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour.

12 INTIMATE PAPERS OF COLONEL HOUSE

The young House was taken to England as a boy and went
to school at Bath. His experiences with his schoolmates by
no means presaged the cordial relations which he was later to
establish with British diplomats:
'James attempted the same sort of rough play we had been
accustomed to in Texas, and we were constantly in broils
with the young English lads, who were not familiar with such
lawlessness. My old darkey nurse used to tell me that if I
had not been the seventh son of a seventh son, I would never
have survived.'
At the age of fourteen, after the death of his mother, he
was sent to school first in Virginia and then in Connecticut.
House's recollections of the former are not pleasant: 'I shall
never forget my depression when we arrived.... The nearest
town to us was thirty miles away, and a more desolate,
lonely spot no homesick boy ever saw.' Scholastic pursuits
evidently made less impression on his mind than the cruelty
of the older boys, which soon furnished an opportunity for
House to display his mettle. He says little of the particular
incident which evidently gave him a preferred place among
the boys, but that little indicates something of the determined temper which was to appear on various occasions
during his political career.
'I made up my mind at the second attempt to haze me
that I would not permit it. I not only had a pistol but a large
knife, and with these I held the larger, rougher boys at bay.
There was no limit to the lengths they would go in hazing
those who would allow it. One form I recall was that of going
through the pretense of hanging. They would tie a boy's
hands behind him and string him up by the neck over a limb
until he grew purple in the face.... None of it, however, fell
to me. What was done to those who permitted it, is almost