boys to sink, burn, and destroy, and do all the mischief we could.
Tom Crauford had the master's child to dry nurse: he was only two years
old: Tom let him fall, not intentionally, but the poor child was a
cripple in consequence of it for life. This was an accident which under
any other circumstances we should have deplored, but to us it was almost
a joke.

The cruel treatment I had received from these people, had so demoralised
me, that those passions which under more skilful or kinder treatment had
either not been known, or would have lain dormant, were roused into full
and malignant activity: I went to school a good-hearted boy, I left it a
savage. The accident with the child occurred two days before the
commencement of the vacation, and we were all dismissed on the following
day in consequence. On my return home I stated verbally to my father
and mother, as I had done before by letter, that I was resolved to go to
sea. My mother wept, my father expostulated. I gazed with apathy on
the one, and listened with cold indifference to the reasoning and
arguments of the other; a choice of schools was offered to me, where I
might be a parlour boarder, and I was to finish at the university, if I
would give up my fatal infatuation. Nothing, however, would do; the die
was cast, and for the sea I was to prepare.

What fool was it who said that the happiest times of our lives is passed
at school? There may, indeed, be exceptions, but the remark cannot be
generalised. Stormy as has been my life, the most miserable part of it
(with very little exception) was passed at school; and my mind never
received so much injury from any scenes of vice and excess in
after-life, as it did from the shameful treatment and bad example I met
with there. If my bosom burned with fiend-like passions, whose fault
was it? How had the sacred pledge, given by the master, been redeemed?
Was I not sacrificed to the most sordid avarice, in the first instance,
and almost flayed alive in the second, to gratify revenge? Of the
filthy manner in which our food was prepared, I can only say that the
bare recollection of it excites nausea; and to this hour, bread and
milk, suet pudding, and shoulders of mutton, are objects of my
deep-rooted aversion. The conduct of the ushers, who were either
tyrannical extortioners, or partakers in our crimes--the constant loss
of our clothes by the dishonesty or carelessness of the servants--the
purloining our silver