When I came to myself and thought
of the school, I hastened to return.
I inquired for the wagon in which
I had come: it had been gone for hours. I asked the time: it was almost
midnight! A sudden quaking seized me. How was I to get back to school?
I was too weary to make the journey on foot, and I knew not where to
apply for a conveyance. Even if I should find one, could I venture to
disturb the school-house long after midnight? to arouse that sleeping
lion, the usher, in the very midst of his night's rest? The idea was
too dreadful for a delinquent school-boy. All the horrors of return
rushed upon me - my absence must long before this have been
remarked - and absent for a whole night? A deed of darkness not easily
to be expiated. The rod of the pedagogue budded forth into tenfold
terrors before my affrighted fancy. I pictured to myself punishment and
humiliation in every variety of form; and my heart sickened at the
picture. Alas! how often are the petty ills of boyhood as painful to
our tender natures, as are the sterner evils of manhood to our robuster
minds.
I wandered about among the booths, and I might have derived a lesson
from my actual feelings, how much the charms of this world depend upon
ourselves; for I no longer saw anything gay or delightful in the
revelry around me.
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