n my education. To the profession of a barber
my father added that of bleeding and tooth-drawing. At ten years old I
could cut hair pretty well. People did say, that those upon whom I had
operated, looked as if their heads had been gnawed by the rats; but it
was the remark of envy; and, as my father observed, "there must be a
beginning to every thing."

At fifteen, I entered upon the rudiments of shaving; and after having
nearly ruined my father's credit, from the pounds of flesh which I
removed with the hair of my customers, who were again consoled by his
observing, that "there must be a beginning to every thing," I became
quite expert. I was subsequently initiated into the higher branches of
tooth-drawing and bleeding. In the former, at first I gave great
dissatisfaction, either from breaking the decayed tooth short off, and
leaving the stump in the socket, or from mistaking the one pointed out,
and drawing a sound engine of mastication in its stead. In the latter,
I made more serious mistakes, having more than once cut so deep as to
open the artery, while I missed the vein; in consequence of which I was
never afterwards employed, except by a husband to relieve a scolding
wife, or by nephews who were anxious about the health of an everlasting
uncle. But, as my father wisely observed, "there must be a beginning to
every thing;" and, as I could only practise upon living subjects,
"individuals must suffer for the good of the community at large." At
the age of twenty I was an accomplished barber.

But rapid as was my career, I was not fated to continue in it long.
Like the shot propelled from the mouth of the cannon, which, in its
extreme velocity, is turned from the direction which has been given it
by glancing along the weakest substance, so was my course of life
changed from its direction by meeting with a woman.

My father had a good customer; he had shaved him every morning for
years, had extracted every tooth in his head, and was now winding up his
long account by bleeding him daily, under the direction of an ignorant
apothecary. I was often at the house,--not to bleed him, for my father
either thought him too valuable, or was too grateful for past favours to
trust him in my hands;--but I held the basin, procured water, and
arranged the bandages. He had a daughter, a lovely girl, whom I adored
in secret; but her rank in life was too far above mine to allow me to
express my feelings. I was then a handsom