But this restraint I was freed from in a few days, by an accident
which happened in a quarrel between me and another boy; who, taking
upon him to insult my poverty, I was so incensed at his ungenerous
reproach that with one stroke with my machine I cut him to the
skull, to the great terror of myself and schoolfellows, who left
him bleeding on the ground, and ran to inform the master of what
had happened. I was so severely punished for this trespass that,
were I to live to the age of Methusalem, the impression it made on
me would not be effaced; the more than the antipathy and horror I
conceived for the merciless tyrant who inflicted it. The contempt
which my appearance naturally produced in all who saw me, the continual
wants to which I was exposed, and my own haughty disposition,
impatient of affronts, involved me in a thousand troublesome
adventures, by which I was at length inured in adversity, and
emboldened to undertakings far above my years. I was often inhumanly
scourged for crimes I did not commit, because, having the character of
a vagabond in the village, every piece of mischief, whose author
lay unknown, was charged upon me. I have been found guilty of
robbing orchards I never entered, of killing cats I never hunted,
of stealing gingerbread I never touched, and of abusing old women
I never saw. Nay, a stammering carpenter had eloquence enough to
persuade my master that I fired a pistol loaded with small shot into
his window; though my landlady and the whole family bore witness
that I was abed fast asleep at the time when this outrage was
committed, I was once flogged for having narrowly escaped drowning,
by the sinking of a ferry boat in which I was passenger. Another
time, for having recovered of a bruise occasioned by a horse and
cart running over me. A third time, for being bitten by a baker's
dog. In short, whether I was guilty or unfortunate, the correction
and sympathy of this arbitrary pedagogue were the same.