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The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
page 17 of 524 (03%)
when thirteen years of age, I was sent for a month to the county jail. I
came out, my morals unimproved, my hatred to my oppressors encreased
tenfold. Bread and water did not tame my blood, nor solitary confinement
inspire me with gentle thoughts. I was angry, impatient, miserable; my only
happy hours were those during which I devised schemes of revenge; these
were perfected in my forced solitude, so that during the whole of the
following season, and I was freed early in September, I never failed to
provide excellent and plenteous fare for myself and my comrades. This was a
glorious winter. The sharp frost and heavy snows tamed the animals, and
kept the country gentlemen by their firesides; we got more game than we
could eat, and my faithful dog grew sleek upon our refuse.

Thus years passed on; and years only added fresh love of freedom, and
contempt for all that was not as wild and rude as myself. At the age of
sixteen I had shot up in appearance to man's estate; I was tall and
athletic; I was practised to feats of strength, and inured to the
inclemency of the elements. My skin was embrowned by the sun; my step was
firm with conscious power. I feared no man, and loved none. In after life I
looked back with wonder to what I then was; how utterly worthless I should
have become if I had pursued my lawless career. My life was like that of an
animal, and my mind was in danger of degenerating into that which informs
brute nature. Until now, my savage habits had done me no radical mischief;
my physical powers had grown up and flourished under their influence, and
my mind, undergoing the same discipline, was imbued with all the hardy
virtues. But now my boasted independence was daily instigating me to acts
of tyranny, and freedom was becoming licentiousness. I stood on the brink
of manhood; passions, strong as the trees of a forest, had already taken
root within me, and were about to shadow with their noxious overgrowth, my
path of life.

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