Mischievous Andy
“Set the case! You are Shauney Kerr’s mare, and me Billy Buck. And I should mount you, and you should kick, fall, fling, and break your neck, should I be to blame for that?”
Imagine this gibberish, roared out by a sandy-haired boy, as he came leaping from the door of a log-schoolhouse, ready to defy all the other boys to a race, a wrestle, or a jumping match, while he playfully laid sprawling as many of his friends as he could trip unawares.
There you have Andy Jackson!
Andy, tall, lank, red-headed, blue-eyed, freckled, barefoot, and dressed in coarse copperas-coloured clothes, was the son of a poor Scotch Irish widow. He was born and reared in the Carolinas. He lived with his mother in the Waxhaws Settlement. His home was a log-cabin in a clearing.
His mother earned her living and that of her two youngest boys. She had great ambitions for Andy. She sent him to school in the little log-schoolhouse. And, when she had earned enough money, she paid his tuition at a country academy.
No boy ever lived who liked fun better than Andy. He ran foot-races, leaped the bar, and high-jumped. To the younger boys, who never questioned his mastery, he was a generous protector. There was nothing he would not do to defend them.
But boys of his own age and older, found him self-willed, somewhat overbearing, easily offended, very irascible, and on the whole difficult to get along with.
He learned to read, write, and cast accounts—little more.
James Parton (Retold)