to his
nose--botanising with his maiden aunts--doing the pretty at tea-tables
with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and
attending to the kettle--telling tales on all naughty boys and
girls--laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny-pig--keeping
all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer--having his own
peg for his uncrushed hat--saying his prayers precisely as the clock
strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's-buff--and
puffed up every Sabbath eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon
memory for a sermon--while all the other boys are scolded for having
fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write
sermons himself at his tender years, nay--even to be able to give you
chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far
that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even
of his Sunday clothes--blotting his copy--impiously pinning pieces of
paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father--going to
the fishing not only without leave, but against orders--bathing in the
forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned--drying powder before the
schoolroom fire, and blowing himself and two crack-skulled cronies to
the ceiling--tying kettles to the tails of dogs--shooting an old woman's
laying hen--galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps--climbing
trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up the
tooth-of-time-indented sides of old castles after wallflowers and
starlings--being run away with in carts by colts against turnpike
gates--buying bad ballads from young gypsy-girls, who, on receiving a
sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change
out of that;"--on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail--a
devil for galloping--not only attending country races for a saddle and
collar, but entering for and winning the prize--dancing like a devil in
barns at kirns--seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming
heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be
involved--fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn
beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen
blue--and, to conclude "this strange eventful history," once brought
home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom, and
found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the
moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel