This May Appear A Very Simple Matter To
Some, But It Will Be Understood By Every Unlucky Wight In My
Predicament, Who Has Had The Misfortune Of Being Born To Great
Expectations.
I passed several days in rambling about the scenes of my boyhood;
partly because I absolutely did not know what to do with myself, and
partly because I did not know that I should ever see them again.
I
clung to them as one clings to a wreck, though he knows he must
eventually cast himself loose and swim for his life. I sat down on a
hill within sight of my paternal home, but I did not venture to
approach it, for I felt compunction at the thoughtlessness with which I
had dissipated my patrimony. But was I to blame, when I had the rich
possessions of my curmudgeon of an uncle in expectation?
The new possessor of the place was making great alterations. The house
was almost rebuilt. The trees which stood about it were cut down; my
mother's flower-garden was thrown into a lawn; all was undergoing a
change. I turned my back upon it with a sigh, and rambled to another
part of the country.
How thoughtful a little adversity makes one. As I came in sight of the
school-house where I had so often been flogged in the cause of wisdom,
you would hardly have recognized the truant boy who but a few years
since had eloped so heedlessly from its walls.
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