CHAPTER II


_Progress of my education, and conjectures on its consequences_


Bold in his projects, lucky in his bargains, and fertile in resources,
every thing, for a time, which my father undertook, seemed to prosper.

In the interim, I grew apace; and, according to the old phrase, was my
father's pride and my mother's joy. His free humour, and the delight
she took in exhibiting her boy, had occasioned me, in early infancy,
to be handed from arm to arm, and so familiarized to a variety of
countenances, as soon to be entirely exempted from the usual fears
of children. My father's bargains and sales brought me continually
acquainted with strange faces. He was vain of me, fond of having me
with him, and, as he called it, of case-hardening me. I became full
of prattle, inquisitive, had an incessant flow of spirits, and often
put interrogatories so whimsical, or so uncommon, as to make myself
remarkably amusing.

From inclination, indeed, and not from plan, my father took some
trouble in my education; which I suspect was productive of unforeseen
effects. He played with me as a cat does with her kitten, and taught
me all the tricks of which he was master. They were chiefly indeed of
a bodily kind; such as holding me over his head erect on the palm of
his hand; putting me into various postures; making me tumble in as
many ways as he could devise; pitching me on the back of his hunter,
and accustoming me to sit on full trot; with abundance of other