he sky. The Dominie, the matron, Marables, and
Fleming, the scene in the cabin--all passed in rapid succession. I felt
that I had done my duty, and that I had been unjustly treated; my head
ached with tumultuous and long suppressed feelings. Reader, I stated
that when I was first taken in hand by Mr Drummond I was a savage,
although a docile one, to be reclaimed by kindness, and kindness only.
You may have been surprised at the rapid change which took place in a
few years; that change was produced by kindness. The conduct of Mr
Drummond, of his amiable wife and daughter, had been all kindness; the
Dominie and the worthy old matron had proved equally beneficent.
Marables had been kind; and, although now and then, as in the case of
the usher at the school, and Fleming on board the lighter, I had
received injuries, still, these were but trifling checks to the
uninterrupted series of kindness with which I had been treated by
everybody. Thus was my nature rapidly formed by a system of kindness
assisted by education; and had this been followed up, in a few years my
new character would have been firmly established. But the blow was now
struck, injustice roused up the latent feelings of my nature, and when I
rose the next morning I was changed. I do not mean to say that all that
precept and education had done for me was overthrown; but if not
overthrown, it was so shaken to the base, so rent from the summit to the
foundation, that, at the slightest impulse in a wrong direction, it
would have fallen in and left nothing but a mixed chaos of ruined
prospects. If anything could hold it together it was the kindness and
affection of Sarah, to which I would again and again return in my
revolving thoughts, as the only bright star to be discovered in my
clouded horizon.

How dangerous, how foolish, how presumptuous it is in adults to suppose
that they can read the thoughts and the feelings of those of a tender
age! How often has this presumption on their part been the ruin of a
young mind, which, if truly estimated and duly fostered, would have
blossomed and produced good fruit! The blush of honest indignation is
as dark as the blush of guilt, and the paleness of concentrated courage
as marked as that of fear, the firmness of conscious innocence is but
too often mistaken as the effrontery of hardened vice, and the tears
springing from a source of injury, the tongue tied from the oppression
of a wounded heart, the trembling and