discipline--like the despot who exacted from his subjects so many
barrels of perspiration, whenever there came a long and severe frost. Do
not familiarize the mind when young to the toleration of slavery, lest
it prove afterwards incapable of recognizing and relishing the principle
of an honest and manly independence. I have known many children, on
whom a rigor of discipline, affecting the mind only (for severe corporal
punishment is now almost exploded), impressed a degree of timidity
almost bordering on pusillanimity. Away, then, with the specious and
long-winded arguments of a false and mistaken philosophy. A child will
be a child, and a boy a boy, to the conclusion of the chapter. Bell
or Lancaster would not relish the pap or caudle-cup three times a day;
neither would an infant on the breast feel comfortable after a gorge of
ox beef. Let them, therefore, put a little of the mother's milk of human
kindness and consideration into their straight-laced systems.

A hedge schoolmaster was the general scribe of the parish, to whom all
who wanted letters or petitions written, uniformly applied--and these
were glorious opportunities for the pompous display of pedantry; the
remuneration usually consisted of a bottle of whiskey.

A poor woman, for instance, informs Mat that she wishes to have a letter
written to her son, who is a soldier abroad. "An' how long is he gone,
ma'am?"

"Och, thin, masther, he's from me goin' an fifteen year; an' a comrade
of his was spakin' to Jim Dwyer, an' says his ridgiment's lyin' in the
Island of Budanages, somewhere in the back parts of Africa."

"An' is it a lotther of petition you'd be afther havin' me to indite for
you, ma'am?"