tasks, set the envy of my brother to watch me during the
performance, make the most diligent search after my books, and destroy
them without mercy, when they were found; but he could not outroot my
darling propensity. I exerted all my powers to elude his watchfulness.
Censures and stripes were sufficiently unpleasing to make me strive to
avoid them. To effect this desirable end, I was incessantly employed in
the invention of stratagems and the execution of expedients.

My passion was surely not deserving of blame, and I have frequently
lamented the hardships to which it subjected me; yet, perhaps, the
claims which were made upon my ingenuity and fortitude were not without
beneficial effects upon my character.

This contention lasted from the sixth to the fourteenth year of my age.
My father's opposition to my schemes was incited by a sincere though
unenlightened desire for my happiness. That all his efforts were
secretly eluded or obstinately repelled, was a source of the
bitterest regret. He has often lamented, with tears, what he called my
incorrigible depravity, and encouraged himself to perseverance by the
notion of the ruin that would inevitably overtake me if I were allowed
to persist in my present career. Perhaps the sufferings which arose to
him from the disappointment, were equal to those which he inflicted on
me.

In my fourteenth year, events happened which ascertained my future
destiny. One evening I had been sent to bring cows from a meadow, some
miles distant from my father's mansion. My time was limited, and I was
menaced with severe chastisement if, according to my custom, I should
stay beyond the period assigned.

For some time these menaces rung in my ears, and I went on my way with
speed. I arrived at the meadow, but the cattle had broken the fence
and escaped. It was my duty to carry home the earliest tidings of this
accident, but the first suggestion was to examine the cause and manner
of this escape. The field was bounded by cedar railing. Five of these
rails were laid horizontally from post to post. The upper one had been
broken in the middle, but the rest had merely been drawn out of the
holes on one side, and rested with their ends on the ground. The means
which had been used for this end, the reason why one only was broken,
and that one the uppermost, how a pair of horns could be so managed
as to effect that which the hands of man would have found difficult,
supplied a theme of meditation.