found me out:
there was no shifting the blame any longer upon other people's
shoulders,--no good-natured maid to take upon herself the enormities
of which I stood accused in the article of bread and butter, besides
the crying sin of stolen ends of puddings, and cold pies strangely
missing. The truth was but too manifest in my looks,--in the evident
signs of inanition which I exhibited after the fullest meals, in
spite of the double allowance which my master was privately
instructed by my kind parents to give me. The sense of the
ridiculous, which is but too much alive in grown persons, is tenfold
more active and alert in boys. Once detected, I was the constant butt
of their arrows,--the mark against which every puny leveller directed
his little shaft of scorn. The very Graduses and Thesauruses were
raked for phrases to pelt me with by the tiny pedants. Ventri
natus--Ventri deditus,--Vesana gula,--Escarum gurges,--Dapibus
indulgens,--Non dans fraena gulae,-Sectans lautae fercula mensae,
resounded wheresoever I passed. I led a weary life, suffering the
penalties of guilt for that which was no crime, but only following
the blameless dictates of nature. The remembrance of those childish
reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days come
again, and the horror I used to feel, when in some silent corner,
retired from the notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have sat to
mumble the solitary slice of gingerbread allotted me by the bounty of
considerate friends, and have ached at heart because I could not
spare a portion of it, as I saw other boys do, to some favorite boy;
for if I know my own heart, I was never selfish,--never possessed a
luxury which I did not hasten to communicate to others; but my food,
alas! was none; it was an indispensable necessary; I could as soon
have spared the blood in my veins, as have parted that with my
companions.

Well, no one stage of suffering lasts forever: we should grow
reconciled to it at length, I suppose, if it did. The miseries of my
school-days had their end; I was once more restored to the paternal
dwelling. The affectionate solicitude of my parents was directed to
the good-natured purpose of concealing, even from myself, the
infirmity which haunted me. I was continually told that I was
growing, and the appetite I displayed was humanely represented as
being nothing more than a symptom and an effect of that. I used even
to be complimented upon it. But this temporary