expect to use it. You deserve punishment for such carelessness, and I
wish your father had chastised you severely." And taking the offending
cane from his hand, she, too, left him to meditations, somewhat like
the following:--

"'Tis too bad, I declare! If I had tried to do the very wickedest thing
I possibly could, father and mother would not have scolded me worse.
That dear little cane! I told Henry I would show it to him on my way to
school, and now what shall I say about it? It's abominable--it's right
down cruel to treat me so. When I had not intended to do the least thing
wrong, only just as I was looking at the bottom of my cane, by the
merest accident the head of it touched that little useless piece of
crockery. I hate the sight of you," he added, touching the many colored
and gilded fragments with the toe of his boot, as they lay before him,
"and I hate father and mother, and every body else--and I'm tired of
being scolded for nothing at all. Big boy as I am, they scold me for
every little thing, just as they did when I was a little shaver like
Eddy. What's the use? I won't bear it. I declare I won't much longer."
And then followed reveries like others often indulged before, of being
his own master, and doing as he pleased without father and mother always
at hand to dictate, and find fault, and scold him so bitterly if he
happened to make a little mistake. Other boys of his age had left home,
and taken care of themselves, and he would too. "I am as good a scholar
as any one in school, except Charles Harvey, and I am as strong as any
boy I play with, and pity if I can't take care of myself. Home! Yes, to
be sure it might be a dear good home, but father is so full of business,
and anxious, and thinking all the time, he never speaks to one of us,
unless it is to tell us to do something, or to find fault with what is
done. And mother--fret, fret, fret, tired to death with the care of the
children, and company, and servants, and societies, and every thing--it