Holly Springs Gazette

SKETCH OF P. W. TOMPKINS.

P. W. Tompkins, the present whig candidate for Congress, was born in the town of Lexington, Ky., of parents of high standing in society, and in good circumstances. His father was a merchant. His parents lived in Lexington until he was about seven years of age. In the general derangement which took place in the commercial affairs of the country about this time, Mr. Tompkins' father was among the sufferers. On settling up his business, he found that it would take all the property he owned in the world to discharge his indebtedness. But being an honest man, he willingly gave up all that he possessed, and paid his debts to the last mite. He was thus, not by his fault, but by the changes of fortune, reduced to extreme poverty. He then removed to the western border of Kentucky, then a howling wilderness. P. W. Tompkins, the present candidate for Congress, was now about eight years old. From this time until he was about seventeen, (a period of nine years) he never saw a church or a school-house, such a wilderness was the country in which he lived. During this period, besides assisting his father in the cultivation of a little farm for the sustenance of the family, he shod all the ploughs and made all the shoes used by them, and occasionally in bad weather, when there was nothing else to do, his mother would put him in the loom to weave cloth for the clothing of the family. If he had any leisure time, he employed it in reading. He studied the English Grammar after he was 20 years of age. His father's circumstances being now some little improved, he offered his son an education, which he declined receiving at his father's hands, preferring to see his whole means devoted to the comfort of his family and to the education of his younger children. The son studied law and obtained license to practice about the age of 24 or 25. A short time after he was licensed, his eyes became so much affected from hard study, that he was for three years unable to read a page. In this condition he came to Mississippi and settled himself, emphatically "a stranger in a strange land." His eyes continued so bad that he was compelled to employ a clerk to read to him the statutes of the State. But he contended successfully against all these difficulties, and succeeded beyond his expectations. We deem it unnecessary to trace him further. What follows of his history is identified with that of the State. Suffice it to say, that after nobly breasting these waves of adversity, the current of his affairs has taken a change, and he is now able to ride triumphantly above them. He is now made able, by his own exertions, to render cheerful the declining years of a widowed mother, who, in the ordinary course of things, will soon be called hence. His life is a noble example to young men who have to struggle against the tide of fortune, and affords one of the finest illustrations of that good old maxim, "Perseverantia omnia vincit."