scurrilous letters, headed a mutiny, entered into a league with the
other boys to sink, burn and destroy, and do all the mischief we
could. Tom Crauford had the master's child to dry nurse: he was only
two years old: Tom let him fall, not intentionally, but the poor child
was a cripple in consequence of it for life. This was an accident
which under any other circumstances we should have deplored, but to us
it was almost a joke.

The cruel treatment I had received from these people, had so
demoralized me, that those passions,--which under more skilful or
kinder treatment, had either not been known, or would have lain
dormant, were roused into full and malignant activity: I went to
school a good-hearted boy, I left it a savage. The accident with the
child occurred two days before the commencement of the vacation, and
we were all dismissed on the following day in consequence. On my
return home I stated verbally to my father and mother, as I had done
before by letter, that I was resolved to go to sea. My mother wept, my
father expostulated. I gazed with apathy on the one, and listened
with cold indifference to the reasoning and arguments of the other;
a choice of schools was offered to me, where I might be a parlour
boarder, and I was to finish at the University, if I would but give up
my fatal infatuation. Nothing, however, would do; the die was cast,
and for the sea I was to prepare.

What fool was it who said that the happiest times of our lives is
passed at school? There may, indeed, be exceptions, but the remark
cannot be generalized. Stormy as has been my life, the most miserable
part of it (with very little exception) was passed at school; and my
mind never received so much injury from any scenes of vice and excess
in after-life, as it did from the shameful treatment and bad example