I do not speak of these things as of substantial evils affecting

my condition. Perhaps, in one or more respects, they were benefits.

They taught me humility in the first place, and made that humility

independence, by showing me that the lesson was bestowed in wantonness,

and not with the purpose of improvement. And, in proportion as

my physical nature suffered their neglect, it acquired strength

by the very roughening to which that neglect exposed it. In this

I possessed a vast advantage over my little companion. His frame,

naturally feeble, sunk under the oppressive tenderness to which the

constant care of a vain father, a doting mother, and sycophantic

friends and servants, subjected it. The attrition of boy with boy,

in the half-manly sports of schoolboy life--its very strifes and

scuffles--would have brought his blood into adequate circulation,

and hardened his bones, and given elasticity to his sinews. But

from all these influences, he was carefully preserved and protected.

He was not allowed to run, for fear of being too much heated. He

could not jump, lest he might break a blood-vessel. In the ball

play he might get an eye knocked out; and even tops and marbles

were forbidden, lest he should soil his hands and wear out the knees

of his green breeches. If he indulged in these sports it was only

by stealth, and at the fearful cost of a falsehood on every such

occasion. When will parents learn that entirely to crush and keep

down the proper nature of the young, is to produce inevitable

perversity, and stimulate the boyish ingenuity to crime?

With me the case was very different. If cuffing and kicking could

have killed, I should have died many sudden and severe deaths in

the rough school to which I was sent. If eyes were likely to be lost

in the campus, corded balls of India-rubber, or still harder ones

of wood, impelled by shinny (goff) sticks, would have obliterated

all of mine though they had been numerous as those of Argus. My

limbs and eyes escaped all injury; my frame grew tall and vigorous

in consequence of neglect, even as the forest-tree, left to the

conflict of all the winds of heaven; while my poor little friend,

Edgar, grew daily more and more diminutive, just as some plant,

which nursing and tendance within doors deprive of the wholesome

sunshine and generous breezes of the sky. The paleness of his cheek

increased, the languor of his frame, the meagerness of his form,

the inability of his nature! He was pining rapidly away, in spite

of that excessive care, which, perhaps, had been in the first

instance, the unhappy source of all his feebleness.

He died--and I became an object of greater dislike than ever

to his parents. They could not but contrast my strength, with his

feebleness--my improvement with his decline--and when they remembered

how little had been their regard for me and how much for him--without

ascribing the difference of result to the true cause--they repined

at the ways of Providence, and threw upon me the reproach of it.

They gave me less heed and fewer smiles than ever. If I improved

at school, it was well, perhaps; but they never inquired, and I

could not help fancying that it was with a positive expression of

vexation, that my aunt heard, on one occasion, from my teacher, in

the presence of some guests, that I was likely to be an honor to

the family.




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