For My Part, I Confess It With Shame, I Was An Incorrigible Laggard.
I
have always had the poetical feeling, that is to say, I have always
been an idle fellow and prone to play the vagabond.
I used to get away
from my books and school whenever I could, and ramble about the fields.
I was surrounded by seductions for such a temperament. The school-house
was an old-fashioned, white-washed mansion of wood and plaister,
standing on the skirts of a beautiful village. Close by it was the
venerable church with a tall Gothic spire. Before it spread a lovely
green valley, with a little stream glistening along through willow
groves; while a line of blue hills that bounded the landscape gave rise
to many a summer day dream as to the fairy land that lay beyond.
In spite of all the scourgings I suffered at that school to make me
love my book, I cannot but look back upon the place with fondness.
Indeed, I considered this frequent flagellation as the common lot of
humanity, and the regular mode in which scholars were made. My kind
mother used to lament over my details of the sore trials I underwent in
the cause of learning; but my father turned a deaf ear to her
expostulations. He had been flogged through school himself, and swore
there was no other way of making a man of parts; though, let me speak
it with all due reverence, my father was but an indifferent
illustration of his own theory, for he was considered a grievous
blockhead.
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