Nothing, I Am Convinced, But The Poetical Temperament, That Hurried
Me Into The Scrape, Brought Me Out Of It Without My Becoming An Arrant
Vagabond.
Full of the enjoyment of the moment, giddy with the wildness of animal
spirits, so rapturous in a boy,
I capered, I danced, I played a
thousand fantastic tricks about the stage, in the villages in which we
exhibited; and I was universally pronounced the most agreeable monster
that had ever been seen in those parts. My disappearance from school
had awakened my father's anxiety; for I one day heard a description of
myself cried before the very booth in which I was exhibiting; with the
offer of a reward for any intelligence of me. I had no great scruple
about letting my father suffer a little uneasiness on my account; it
would punish him for past indifference, and would make him value me the
more when he found me again. I have wondered that some of my comrades
did not recognize in me the stray sheep that was cried; but they were
all, no doubt, occupied by their own concerns. They were all laboring
seriously in their antic vocations, for folly was a mere trade with the
most of them, and they often grinned and capered with heavy hearts.
With me, on the contrary, it was all real. I acted con amore, and
rattled and laughed from the irrepressible gayety of my spirits. It is
true that, now and then, I started and looked grave on receiving a
sudden thwack from the wooden sword of Harlequin, in the course of my
gambols; as it brought to mind the birch of my school-master.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 168 of 433
Words from 44748 to 45026
of 115667
