consist in believing all persons, male and female, before the year 1688,
and nearly all after it, to have been either hypocrites or fools, had
learnt certain things which he would hardly have been taught just now
in any school in England; for his training had been that of the old
Persians, "to speak the truth and to draw the bow," both of which savage
virtues he had acquired to perfection, as well as the equally savage
ones of enduring pain cheerfully, and of believing it to be the finest
thing in the world to be a gentleman; by which word he had been taught
to understand the careful habit of causing needless pain to no human
being, poor or rich, and of taking pride in giving up his own pleasure
for the sake of those who were weaker than himself. Moreover, having
been entrusted for the last year with the breaking of a colt, and the
care of a cast of young hawks which his father had received from Lundy
Isle, he had been profiting much, by the means of those coarse and
frivolous amusements, in perseverance, thoughtfulness, and the habit
of keeping his temper; and though he had never had a single "object
lesson," or been taught to "use his intellectual powers," he knew the
names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as
cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud
which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on
account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the
school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford boys; in which
brutal habit he took much delight, and contrived, strange as it may
seem, to extract from it good, not only for himself but for others,
doing justice among his school-fellows with a heavy hand, and succoring
the oppressed and afflicted; so that he was the terror of all the
sailor-lads, and the pride and stay of all the town's boys and girls,
and hardly considered that he had done his duty in his calling if he
went home without beating a big lad for bullying a little one. For the
rest, he never thought about thinking, or felt about feeling; and had