officers: the system of signals was not then perfected, and the means of
conveying secret and swift intelligence, by telegraphic science, had not in
those days been practised. The art of begging was then only art without
science: the native genius of knavery unaided by method or discipline. The
consequence was, that the beggars fled before my father's beadles,
constables, and overseers; and they were dispersed through other parishes,
or led into captivity to roundhouses, or consigned to places called asylums
for the poor and indigent, or lodged in workhouses, or crammed into houses
of industry or penitentiary houses, where, by my father's account of the
matter, there was little industry and no penitence, and from whence the
delinquents issued, after their seven days' captivity, as bad or worse than
when they went in. Be that as it may, the essential point with my father
was accomplished: they were got rid of that season, and before the next
season he resolved that I should be out of the hands of the women, and safe
at a public school, which he considered as a specific for all my
complaints, and indeed for every disease of mind and body incident to
childhood. It was the only thing, he said, to make a man of me. "There was
Jack B----, and Thomas D----, and Dick C----, sons of gentlemen in our
county, and young Lord Mowbray to boot, all at school with Dr. Y----, and
what men they were already!" A respite of a few months was granted, in
consideration of my small stature, and of my mother's all eloquent tears.
Meantime my father took me more to himself; and, mixed with men, I acquired
some manly, or what were called manly, ideas. My attention was awakened,
and led to new things. I took more exercise and less medicine; and with my
health and strength of body my strength of mind and courage increased. My
father made me ashamed of that nervous sensibility of which I had before
been vain. I was glad that the past should be past and forgotten; yet a
painful reminiscence would come over my mind, whenever I heard or saw the
word _Jew_. About this time I first became fond of reading, and I never saw
the word in any page of any book which I happened to open, without