L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to the
foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. Any complaint
which he had to make was sure of being attended to. This was
understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him against the
severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions
of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I
have been called out of my bed, and _waked for the purpose_, in the
coldest winter nights--and this not once, but night after night--in
my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven
other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has
been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six
last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept,
answerable for an offence they neither dared to commit, nor had the
power to hinder.--The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of
us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with snow; and, under
the cruelest penalties, forbad the indulgence of a drink of water,
when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and
the day's sports.

There was one H----, who, I learned, in after days, was seen expiating
some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying
that this might be the planter of that name, who suffered--at Nevis,
I think, or St. Kits,--some few years since? My friend Tobin was the
benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero
actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red hot iron; and
nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contributions, to the one
half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may
seem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of
his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the
_ward_, as they called our dormitories. This game went on for better