my repose, I had been qualified to exhibit: Family partiality, no doubt, overrated their merit; and hence, my declaiming powers were in a state of such constant requisition, that my orations, like worn out ditties, became vapid and fatiguing to me; and consequently, impaired my relish for that kind of acquirement. More profit attended my reading. After Æsop's fables, and an abridgment of the Roman history, Telemachus was put into our hands; and if it be admitted that the human heart may be bettered by instruction, mine, I may aver, was benefitted by this work of the virtuous Fenelon. While the mild wisdom of Mentor called forth my veneration, the noble ardor of the youthful hero excited my sympathy and emulation. I took part, like a second friend, in the vicissitudes of his fortune, I participated in his toils, I warmed with his exploits, I wept where he wept, and exulted where he tri amphed.

As my lot has been cast in a turbulent period, in a season of civil war and revolution, succeeded by scenes of domestic discord and fury, in all of which I have been compelled to take a part, I deem it of consequence to myself, to bespeak toleration for the detail of a school-boy incident, that may in some degree serve to develope my character. It may equally tend to throw some light on the little world, upon whose stage I had now entered. A few days

after I had been put under the care of Mr. KinnersHey, I was told by my class mates, that it was necessary for me to fight a battle with some one, in order to establish my claim to the honor of being an academy boy that this could not be dispensed with, and that they would select for me a suitable antagonist, one of my match, whom after school I must fight, or be looked upon as a coward. I must confess, that I did not at all relish the proposal. Though possessing a sufficient degree of spirit, or at least irascibility, to defend myself when assaulted, I had never been a

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boxer. Being of a light and slender make, I was not calculated for the business, nor had I ever been ambitious of being the cock of a school Besides, by the laws of the institution I was now a subject of, fighting was a capital crime; a sort of felony de-. prived of clergy, whose punishment was not to be averted by the most scholar-like reading. For these reasons, both of which had sufficient weight with me, and the last not the least, as I had never been a wilful transgressor of rules, or callous to the consequences of an infraction of them, I absolutely declined the proposal; although I had too much of that feeling about me, which some might call false honor, to represent the case to the master, which would at once have extricated me from my difficulty, and brought down condign punishment on its imposers. Matters thus went on until school was out, when I found that the lists were appointed, and that a certain John Appowen, a lad who, though not quite so tall, yet better set and older than myself, was pitted against me. With increased pertinacity I again refused the combat, and insisted on being permitted to go home unmolested. On quickening my pace for this purpose, my persecutors, with Appowen at their head, followed close at my heels. Upon this I moved faster and faster, until my retreat became a flight too unequivocal and inglorious for a man to relate of himself, had not Homer furnished some apology for the procedure, in making the heroic Hector thrice encircle the walls of Troy, before he could find courage to encounter the implacable Achilles. To cut the story short, my spirit could no longer brook an oppression so intolerable, and stung to the quick at the term coward which was lavished upon me, I made a halt and faced my pursuers. A combat immediately ensued between Appowen and myself, which for some time, was maintained on each side, with equal vigor and determination, when unluckily, I received his fist directly in my gullet. The blow for a time depriving me of

breath and the power of resistance, victory declared for my adversary, though not without the acknowledgment of the party, that I had at last behaved well, and shewn myself not unworthy of the name of an academy boy. Being thus established, I had no more battles imposed upon me, and none that I can recollect of my own provoking; for I have a right to declare, that my general deportment was correct and unoffending, though extremely obstinate and unyielding under a sense of injusticeX I gave an early instance of this, in once burning the rod with which my father had corrected me; and upon his finding it out, and correcting me a second time, I declared I would drown myself, and ran towards a creek in a meadow not far off, with such an appearance of determination to execute the threat, that he thought proper to dispatch a servant after me in haste; and upon my being brought back, rather to yield to the violence of my temper, than persist in the attempt to subdue it.

In saying my resistance proceeded from a sense of injustice, I would by no means have it understood, that my father had been culpable. I rather sup pose, that a too ardent idea of the rights of a child, had led me to consider that conduct oppressive, which was merely the effect of a paternal concern for my welfare.

While upon the topic of those early adventures, by which we are initiated into the ways of the world, I may mention a circumstance of another nature, which happened not very long after my arrival in the city. One evening about dusk, I was amusing myself on the pavement before the door, with some marbles; for having never been very strongly incited by a spirit of gambling, I frequently played alone, and even when I had a companion I generally preferred playing in fun, to speak technically, to playing in carnest. A little, skulking rogue, with

whom I had no kind of acquaintance, came up to me, and as he joined me in play with some marbles of his own, he took occasion to observe. that his were too small for him, but as mine, on the contrary, were large and exactly suited to his hand, he proposed an exchange, offering me the odds, first, of two, and then of three for one. Having no disposition to traffic with him, being pleased with my own and satisfied with their number, at first objected to his proposal, but he pressed me in so earnest a manner to accommodate him with but a part of mine, that after some hesitation, I consented. Without giving me time for a resumption of my first determination, he picked up six or eight of my marbles, and throwing me down three or four times the number of his own, the amount of boot being apparently wholly unworthy of calculation, he decamped in a twinkling. Upon gathering up the commodities I had received in such abundance, I found them rather light; and on closer inspection, discovered, that as they had been but clay in the hands of the potter, so I had been an equaiiy ductile material in the hands of a swindler. These things are but puerilities, and very trifles, it is true, but can it be said that they are irrelative to the objects I set out with? And are they not prototypes of the transactions, which the more important scene of man every day exhibits? If swindling and oppression beset us in infancy, does experience warrant us in affirming that the state of manhood is exempt from them?

Might I here be pardoned a brief recognition of the qualities my childhood had unfolded, I might say, that, with a sufficient share of obstinacy and im patience of control, I had never manifested a propensity to mischief; and though I might sometimes have been a follower, I had never promoted or been a leader in those pranks which are denominated untucky: Thank heaven, I had never been guilty of a trick, and rarely, if ever, of a lie. I had no cun

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ning, and consequently, gave no token of those ta' lents which might qualify me, one day, to rise in a commonwealth. On a scrutiny, therefore, of my character, the possibility might have been inferred, that in an evil hour and at a riper age, my passions might have hurried me into acts of fatal rashness, as, under better stars, they might have impelled me into the path of a Hampden; but, that in no situation, I could have trod the track of a Gracchus or a Drusus.

The Gracchi fond of mischief making laws,
And Drusi popular in faction's cause.

Neither could the unshrinking determination which must enter into the composition of a Brutus, have justly been imputed to me; not even on the specious ground of public good: my stuff was not so stern.

My amusements, as I have already said, depended much upon myself. I had a passion for drawing; and my early essays were considered as indications of much genius for the art. I was in the practice also, of cutting men and horses out of cards. By se parating the legs of the bipeds, I mounted them without difficulty; and by a similar process on those of the quadrupeds, I could give them a firm stand on a table. By these means I could either send them a hunting with a pack of hounds, in like manner set upon their feet, or attach unmounted horses to sleighs or wheel carriages (all of which I manufactured) at pleasure. My talent also gave me the command of regiments of cavalry, and my evenings, when there was no company, were generally employed in ar ranging them in order of battle. Divided into two

bodies, they were disposed in hostile array, while round pieces of card representing cannon balls, were the missiles alternately thrown at the different. corps; that side being held to be defeated, which