by my moody master. The first time he cautioned me, with fire in his
eyes, never to let him catch me idling my time in that manner again;
and the second he snatched hold of my ear and gave me so sudden and
violent a pull that he brought me to the ground. He did worse, he took
away my book, and locked it up.

Hostilities having thus commenced, they soon grew hot, and were
pursued with bitterness, tyranny, and malignity. Proceeding from bad
to worse, after a while every thing I did was wrong. In proportion as
his frenzy became hateful or rather terrible to his own imagination,
his cruelty increased. He seemed, in my instance, to have the dread
upon him of committing some injury so violent as perhaps to bring him
to the gallows; and several times in his chafing fits declared his
fear.

This idea haunted him so much that he adopted a new mode of conduct
with me, and, instead of kicking me, knocking me down, or hurling the
first thing that came to hand at me, gave himself time enough to take
the horsewhip. Yet he could not always be thus cautious; and even when
he was, such infernal discipline, though less dangerous, was more
intolerable.

The scenes I went through with this man, the sufferings I endured, and
the stupifying terrors that seized me if I saw but his shadow, I can
never forget. Every thing I did was a motive for chastisement; one
day it was for having turned the horses out to graze, and the very
next for suffering them to stand in the stable. The cattle of his
neighbour, for whom he had a mortal enmity, broke into his field
during the night; and for this I was most unmercifully flogged the
next morning. The pretence was my not having told him that the fence