The Book of Gallant Vagabonds

Here was a man who was born with two great gifts, one the most precious in the world, the other the most perilous. The first was an abounding physical vitality which made the casual business of being alive a divine adventure, the second, an imagination of the sort which refuses discipline and runs away with the whole mind.

The adventure begins in the spring of the year 1772 with the farmers of the Connecticut Valley halting their ploughs in the furrow, and straightening up to stare at a certain extraordinary vehicle going north on the river road. This vehicle was nothing less than a two-wheeled sulky, then a rig almost unheard of outside the towns, and one never known to be used by travellers. A sulky with bundle baggage lashed behind, surely the driver must be an odd kind of rogue! Stopping at nightfall at a farm, the stranger met with close scrutiny by rural candle light. He was a fair-haired youth an inch or so under six feet tall, and of that “rangy” and powerful build which is as characteristic of American soil as Indian corn. His eyes, which were well spaced in a wide forehead, were grey-blue in color, he had a good chin to face the world with, and something of a lean and eagle-ish nose. His name, he said, was John Ledyard, and he was on his way to become a missionary to the Indians.

This youth, John Ledyard, third of his name, had seen the light of day in the village of Groton, Connecticut; his father, a sea captain, had died young; legal mischance or a descent of harpy relatives had deprived the young mother of her property, and John had been brought up in the house of his grandfather at Hartford. Then had come years at grammar school, the death of his grandfather, his virtual adoption by an uncle and aunt, and the attempt of these good folk to make a lawyer of him, which experiment had not been a success.

At twenty-one years of age, John presented something of a problem to his kinsmen. What was to be done with this great fair-haired youth who had neither money nor influential friends? Suddenly Destiny came down the Connecticut Valley with a letter.