Come, It's
High Time To Leave Off Harlequinading, And Go Home To Your Father."
In fact I had a couple of Bow street officers hold of me.
The cruel
Sacharissa had proclaimed who I was, and that a reward had been offered
throughout the country for any tidings of me; and they had seen a
description of me that had been forwarded to the police office in town.
Those harpies, therefore, for the mere sake of filthy lucre, were
resolved to deliver me over into the hands of my father and the
clutches of my pedagogue.
It was in vain that I swore I would not leave my faithful and Afflicted
Columbine. It was in vain that I tore myself from their grasp, and flew
to her; and vowed to protect her; and wiped the tears from her cheek,
and with them a whole blush that might have vied with the carnation for
brilliancy. My persecutors were inflexible; they even seemed to exult
in our distress; and to enjoy this theatrical display of dirt, and
finery, and tribulation. I was carried off in despair, leaving my
Columbine destitute in the wide world; but many a look of agony did I
cast back at her, as she stood gazing piteously after me from the brink
of Hempstead Hill; so forlorn, so fine, so ragged, so bedraggled, yet
so beautiful.
Thus ended my first peep into the world. I returned home, rich in
good-for-nothing experience, and dreading the reward I was to receive
for my improvement. My reception, however, was quite different from
what I had expected. My father had a spice of the devil in him, and did
not seem to like me the worse for my freak, which he termed "sowing my
wild oats." He happened to have several of his sporting friends to dine
with him the very day of my return; they made me tell some of my
adventures, and laughed heartily at them. One old fellow, with an
outrageously red nose, took to me hugely. I heard him whisper to my
father that I was a lad of mettle, and might make something clever; to
which my father replied that "I had good points, but was an ill-broken
whelp, and required a great deal of the whip." Perhaps this very
conversation raised me a little in his esteem, for I found the
red-nosed old gentleman was a veteran fox-hunter of the neighborhood,
for whose opinion my father had vast deference. Indeed, I believe he
would have pardoned anything in me more readily than poetry; which he
called a cursed, sneaking, puling, housekeeping employment, the bane of
all true manhood. He swore it was unworthy of a youngster of my
expectations, who was one day to have so great an estate, and would he
able to keep horses and hounds and hire poets to write songs for him
into the bargain.
I had now satisfied, for a time, my roving propensity. I had exhausted
the poetical feeling. I had been heartily buffeted out of my love for
theatrical display. I felt humiliated by my exposure, and was willing
to hide my head anywhere for a season; so that I might be out of the
way of the ridicule of the world; for I found folks not altogether so
indulgent abroad as they were at my father's table. I could not stay at
home; the house was intolerably doleful now that my mother was no
longer there to cherish me. Every thing around spoke mournfully of her.
The little flower-garden in which she delighted was all in disorder and
overrun with weeds. I attempted, for a day or two, to arrange it, but
my heart grew heavier and heavier as I labored. Every little
broken-down flower that I had seen her rear so tenderly, seemed to
plead in mute eloquence to my feelings. There was a favorite
honeysuckle which I had seen her often training with assiduity, and had
heard her say it should be the pride of her garden. I found it
grovelling along the ground, tangled and wild, and twining round every
worthless weed, and it struck me as an emblem of myself: a mere
scatterling, running to waste and uselessness. I could work no longer
in the garden.
My father sent me to pay a visit to my uncle, by way of keeping the old
gentleman in mind of me. I was received, as usual, without any
expression of discontent; which we always considered equivalent to a
hearty welcome. Whether he had ever heard of my strolling freak or not
I could not discover; he and his man were both so taciturn. I spent a
day or two roaming about the dreary mansion and neglected park; and
felt at one time, I believe, a touch of poetry, for I was tempted to
drown myself in a fish-pond; I rebuked the evil spirit, however, and it
left me. I found the same red-headed boy running wild about the park,
but I felt in no humor to hunt him at present. On the contrary, I tried
to coax him to me, and to make friends with him, but the young savage
was untameable.
When I returned from my uncle's I remained at home for some time, for
my father was disposed, he said, to make a man of me. He took me out
hunting with him, and I became a great favorite of the red-nosed
squire, because I rode at everything; never refused the boldest leap,
and was always sure to be in at the death. I used often however, to
offend my father at hunting dinners, by taking the wrong side in
politics. My father was amazingly ignorant - so ignorant, in fact, as
not to know that he knew nothing. He was staunch, however, to church
and king, and full of old-fashioned prejudices. Now, I had picked up a
little knowledge in politics and religion, during my rambles with the
strollers, and found myself capable of setting him right as to many of
his antiquated notions.
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