p019-014 CHAPTER I. The Neptunian origin of Robin Day; with an account of his early friends, Mother Moll and Skipper Duck, and his preferment to a fat office.

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Sylla, the Roman dictator, is, as far as I know,
the only great man on record who attributed his
advancement to good luck; all other great men being
modestly content to refer their successes in life to
their own merits; insisting, with the philosophers,
that there is not, in reality, any such thing as luck
at all, good, bad, or indifferent, but that every man's
fortune, whether happy or evil, is referable to his
own agency, the direct result of his own wise or
foolish actions. Such may be the fact, for aught I can
say, (it is a comfortable doctrinef or the fortunate,)
and I do not pretend to controvert it; but of one
thing I am very certain, namely, that whether there
be bad luck in the world or not, there is an abundance
of those unhappy personages who are commonly
considered its victims—that is to say, unlucky

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dogs; of which race I was undoubtedly born
a member.

My introduction into the world was of itself sufficient
to establish my claim to pre-eminence in misfortune;
for, from all I was ever able to learn, instead
of making my appearance in the usual way, I came
ashore, one stormy night in September, in the year
1796, upon the coast of New Jersey, washed up by
the sea, like a king-crab; with this advantage, however,
that I had for my shell, or cradle, the battered
hull of a Yankee schooner, which, if it did not keep
me as dry and snug as was desirable, preserved me,
at least, from being swallowed up by the raging billows.
In other words, I was cast ashore in a wreck—
“name unknown,” as the gazettes say, from which
I was taken, a puny little bantling of some twelve
or fifteen months old, half famished and half drowned,
the only living creature, save two ducks that were
soaking in a coop, and a broken-backed cat in the
forecastle, that escaped.

The particulars of this eventful catastrophe, there
were many good reasons why I, though so much
interested in knowing them, should never succeed
in making myself perfectly acquainted with. The
scene of disaster was in the neighborhood of Barnegat,
a place famous in the annals of shipwreck; and
the vessel, there was little doubt, contained a rich
freight of rum and sugar, and other West Indian
products, which it was manifestly nobody's business
to know how to account for. Besides, it was thought
not improbable that the wreck of this particular
schooner was owing less to the fury of the storm
than to the instrumentality of the people of the coast—
land pirates, as they have been called from time
immemorial—who were often accused in past days,
as sometimes in the present, of setting up false

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beacons, to decoy unsuspecting mariners to their ruin.
I have even heard it said, there was a rumor at the
time that the crew of the unfortunate vessel (whose
disappearance could not be otherwise accounted for,)
had met with foul play from the wreckers; which, if
true, was a better reason than all for their keeping
a veil of obscurity over the whole affair. But this
rumor after all, had no better foundation than surmise,
and a disposition on the part of malicious people
to explain the disappearance of the crew, which
was undoubtedly a very remarkable feature in the
shipwreck, in the most unfavorable way. It was
more charitable to suppose they had been suddenly
washed from the deck by some furious billow, which
had carried away every thing above board; and that
I owed my preservation to being left nestling in the
highest berth in the cabin, whence I was plucked by
my robber preservers.

Another reason why the particulars were never
known, was that no one interested ever made inquiry.
No agent or emissary of owner or underwriter,
as far as I could learn, ever visited the spot
to investigate the circumstances attending the wreck,
or attempt the recovery of the property lost: which,
I suppose, was because the news of the disaster never
travelled more than a dozen miles from the scene,
and then only among people, who, whatever cause
they might have to report the worst of it among
themselves, had too much interest in the preservation
of coast privileges—the uninterrupted enjoyment
of flotsam and jetsam—to invite the interference
of strangers and law officers. As for myself,
I think the reader will allow, I was entirely too
young to trouble myself in the matter; or, indeed, to
know any thing about it. Who were my parents,
or whether I had any, were questions which, as they

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concerned nobody, so nobody cared to inquire. But,
I believe, it was generally thought among those
who had the first charge of me, I must have been
the son of the ship's cook, as I had an inordinate
love of good eating, with a judgment in dainties,
which could only be expected from one who had
been indulged in the fat of the caboose; besides showing,
when I grew a year or two older, an extraordinary
tact in roasting crabs and fiddlers, oysters
and sand-eels, and such other stray edibles as I could
lay my hands on.

My earliest recollections go back to some such
scenes; and I have a vague remembrance that I lived
a life of famine in a miserable hut by the sea-side,
with an old beldam, who used to wear a sailor's tarpaulin
hat and pea-jacket, and was, as I have been
since informed, a very Semiramis among land-pirates,
and had not only been engaged in robbing, but had
been the actual cause of, more wrecks than any man
on the coast. She had a wretched little starveling
pony, whose legs she used to tie together of nights,
and, having hung a lantern to his side, send him
stumbling along the beach; in which operation, the
motion of the lantern rocking up and down, had the
appearance, to persons on the sea, of a light from a
vessel sailing along the coast; and thus was undoubtedly
sometimes the cause of the observers driving
on shore, before they dreamed they were nigh
it. Of this circumstance I have the better recollection
as I myself was frequently sent out, especially
in bitter stormy nights, when such stratagems were
most practised, to keep the said pony to his duty, by
whipping him up and down the sands; an employment
in which if I at any time failed, by dropping
asleep from cold or fatigue, or sneaking away under
a sandhill, to shelter me from the winds, I was sure

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to be rewarded with such a drubbing as kept me in
memory of my fault for a week after. I am pretty
confident, indeed, it was with an eye to my future
usefulness in this line of employment, that old
Mother Moll, (for by that name they called her,)
after helping herself to such other valuables in the
wreck (which she was one of the first to enter) as
she could lay hands on, deigned in like manner to
add unlucky me to her share of plunder, and carry
me to her hovel; where, first under the name of
Sammy September—a title given me by the wreckers,
in memory, I suppose, of the month of shipwreck,
and, next, under that of Robin Rusty, which
became, at last, the more frequent appellation—I
had the satisfaction to be cuffed about from morning
till night, and from one year's end to the other, until
rescued by a change of fate from her intolerable
clutches.

She had the greater need of some such assistant,
as the only other being over whom she had any control,
a reprobate son, called Isaac, or Ikey, was now
grown a huge, hulking hobbledehoy of fourteen, was
waxing day by day more restiff and intolerant of
authority, and betraying every evidence of a manly
inclination, sooner or later, to give her the slip, and
set up in the world for himself. He was, assuredly,
a most graceless and abandoned young scoundrel—a
worthy son of such a parent; and I have a recollection
of his communicating to me one day, which he
did with much apparent satisfaction, his expectation,
in about one year more, of being able to trounce, or,
as he expressed it, to “lick,” his mother; an idea,
which, I must confess, was infinitely agreeable to my
infant fancies, as it associated the prospect of my
being able, in course of time, to do the same thing
myself, and thereby requite some of the million

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afflictions which Mother Moll was in the daily practice
of dispensing on my own cheeks and shoulders. I
had this addition, however, to the conception, and
the pleasure of it, in my own case; inasmuch as I
hoped that the day which should see me able to settle
accounts with Mistress Moll, would find me in a
condition to award the same justice to her son Ikey;
for I know not which used me most cruelly, from
whom I received the greatest number of daily drubbings,
or which of them I most heartily detested.

It was to the excess of severity of this she-barbarian
and her savage son that I finally, at the age of
about seven years, owed my escape from their hands;
for their cruelty being observed by others of the
wreckers, excited a kind of indignation and pity
even among them; and one of them, a fellow named
Day, though better known under the nickname of
Duck, which he himself commonly accepted and acknowledged,
the skipper and owner of a shallop, the
Jumping Jenny, in which he carried wood, oysters,
fish, and sundry other articles of merchandise, including
at times, the plunder of the wreckers, to
New York and other places, interfered one day in
my favour; and, having tried more amicable means
in vain, seized me and carried me off by force. It
is true, that he afterwards, in a fit of generosity, sent
the old beldam a cask of rum, which he had, in the
beginning, offered as the price of my ransom, and
which she was now glad to receive as a compensation
in full for her loss.

It was for this reason, I suppose, that my humane
deliverer ever after chose to regard me as his property,
an item of his goods and chattels, bought at
what he always assured me was a price infinitely
above my value, a moveable which nobody could
doubt his right to do with whatever he pleased.

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Having settled this point to his satisfaction—and,
perhaps, also, to mine, for I never dreamed of disputing
it—he proceeded to deport himself accordingly:
and the end was, that, before I had been a
month in his employ, I was convinced that the servitude
I had endured under Mother Moll, infernal
though it might be called, was a kind of paradise,
compared with the purgatory of bondage to which
I was now reduced by my generous and tender
skipper.

The first thing the tyrant did, after getting me on
board, was to appoint me to the honorable office of
ship's cook; an appointment which I doubtless owed
in part to the talents I had already displayed in that
line, while living with Mother Moll, though more
perhaps to my being the only person of the whole
crew—or rather of the ship's company, for crew
there was none, there being, besides the captain,
only one other man on board, and he called himself
the mate—who could be spared for such a duty.
Nor should I have been in less danger of the appointment,
had my talents been inferior, or my years
even fewer; the only qualifications for the office
being that I should be old and strong enough to
hold up the end of a frying-pan, and of sufficient experience
to know, as Captain Duck said, a potatoe
from a pig's foot. The appetite of my noble captain
being extremely artless and unsophisticated,
never aspired beyond the two simple dishes of a boil
and a fry, as he was used to call them; and the preparation
of these was always the same, no matter
what might be the variation in the materials, which
were only determined by the contents of the larder.
If a boil were ordered, all my duty consisted in
tumbling into the pot, along with a sufficiency of
water, a specimen of every eatable on board, fish,

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fowl, and flesh, salt and fresh, beans, peas, pumpkins
and potatoes, clams, oysters, onions, and what not,
and boiling away at a furious rate, until the signal
was given for serving up, by the skipper roaring to
me, “dinner! you son of a cook's jackass!” If a
fry, the operation was equally simple, as nothing
was to be done but to throw the same articles into
the pan, with a pound or two of slush, and keep up
the fire until the mate, in his turn, gave the signal
by suddenly whisking the pan out of my hands, and
as suddenly kicking me over into the lee scuppers.

When I was first made acquainted with the office
to which my skipper's generosity assigned me, I
must confess, my youthful spirits danced with joy;
for having been fairly starved under Mother Moll's
ministry, nothing could be more agreeable to my
desires than a post which assured me, ex officio, of
a full dinner every day. But on this occasion, as
on a great many others that have befallen me, I
reckoned entirely without my host; being soon
forced to the disagreeable discovery that my duty,
as understood by Captain Duck, was to cook dinners,
and not to eat them. My captain was indeed a
brute, and a much worse one than old Mother Moll;
who, though savage enough, had her seasons—few
they were and far between—of good humour. His
apparent humanity in snatching me from the dragoness,
was, at bottom, the same feeling that induced
the latter to take me from the wreck; that is, he
had occasion for my services; or perhaps he was
humane at the moment; for all persons are capable
of pitying distresses not inflicted by themselves, but
by other persons. But be that as it may, it is certain
that such touches of human feeling never visited
his breast again; and that during the whole term of
five years or more, that I remained in his power,

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there was no tyranny or cruelty that a despot could
exercise at the expense of his most helpless slave,
which he did not make me suffer. One would have
thought that my destitute condition, a miserable little
vagabond child without a single kinsman or friend
I could call my own, would have sometimes
awakened his sensibilities, and procured me better
treatment: but I am rather inclined to think my destitution
only made him give a greater loose to his
ferocity, since there was no one left to call him to
account.

As a temper of such unmitigated barbarity is, fortunately,
so uncommon in the world that some will
feel disposed to doubt its existence, it is incumbent on
me to explain the secret of his character, which was
reduced to that extreme pitch of brutality only, I
believe, by indulgence in strong liquors. The fellow,
in short, was a sot, and had been all his life; not indeed
that he ever appeared to the world in a state of
positive intoxication; for that was a point no liquor
could bring him to; but, as he was always drinking,
so his potations kept him constantly in a condition
of sullen fury, like that of the Malay who is smoking
opium for a muck, and may, one knows not how
soon, burst out into a frenzy of rage and murder.

In this frame of mind, it may be supposed, he
would as often have vented his anger upon the mate
as upon me; and this I have no doubt he would have
done, had not this useful officer, who was his cousin,
been a great two-fisted fellow, who made no difficulty
of knocking him down and drubbing him into
his senses, when the wind lay in that direction; by
which means it happened that the skipper was forced,
in spite of himself, to confine his operations entirely
to me.

The particulars of his cruel usage I have no

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desire to enter upon; but their effects were such,
that at the beginning of my thirteenth year, which
was the last of my bondage, I was a wretched little
stunted thing, to appearance not more than nine
years old, a picture of raggedness, emaciation and
misery, a creature with no more knowledge, intelligence,
or spirit than a ferryman's horse, or a sick
ape; which latter animal, I have often been told, I
much more resembled at that time than a human
child. In fact, the brutality of my skipper had
made me almost an idiot: it had killed my spirit, and
stupefied my mind; and such was the gross darkness
in which I had been suffered to grow up, that I
was ignorant even of the existence of the Great Being,
the refuge of the orphan, and the avenger of his
wrongs. I had never even heard his name, except
in the execrations, with which my tormentor coupled
it a thousand times a day.

p019-024 CHAPTER II. An adventure of a goose and a gander, with what happened thereupon to Robin Day.

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Such a creature was I, as wretched and as hopeless,
when the business of my master carried him,
one summer's day, to a certain great town in New
Jersey, situated upon a river, where we cast anchor
in the morning; and I, without troubling myself
with any thoughts of shore, which it was seldom
my lot to visit, fell to work at my vocation in preparing
my master's dinner; in the course of which,
I had occasion to murder a venerable old gander
that had been squalling in the coop, in expectation
of his fate, for the last two days. This execution
being over, and not without five or six hearty cuffs,
which my patron gave me for performing it bunglingly,
I sneaked away to the bows, where, perched
upon the bowsprit, I began, in the process of plucking
the animal, to distribute a shower of feathers
over the tide.

This operation, as it chanced, attracted the attention
of a knot of schoolboys who were playing,
some of them on a wharf hard by, while three or
four others were busking about in a batteau, to
which they had helped themselves; and, whether
it was that there was something more than usual of
the ludicrous given to my employment by my

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uncouth appearance, or that the urchins were ripe for
mischief, they forthwith began to salute me with a
battery, first, of jokes and sarcasms; to which they
afterwards added an occasional volley of pebbles and
oyster-shells. This was a proceeding that caused
me no surprise, for I had been too much accustomed
to unkindness all my days to expect any thing else;
and, I may also add, that such was the indifference
to bodily pain into which I had been beaten, and so
stupefied within me were all the ordinary instincts
of self preservation, that although I was once or
twice hit by the missiles cast at me, and in danger
of faring still worse, I neither removed from my
perch, nor intermitted a moment in my task.

My insensibility, or want of courage, as it doubtless
appeared, gave additional edge to the malice of
my persecutors; and those who were in the batteau,
having taken in a sufficient supply of small shot—
that is to say, of the pebbles and shells as aforesaid—
ventured to push into the stream, for the purpose
of attacking me nearer at hand, which they did
with infinite zeal and intrepidity; and one little fellow
of ten years old, that seemed the greatest imp
of all, the most voluble in railing and the most energetic
in attack, succeeded in planting upon the top
of my forehead the ragged edge of an oyster-shell,
by which I was cut to the bone, and my face in a
moment covered with blood. This, indeed, stung
me to resentment, for the anguish of the wound was
very great; but so sluggish were the movements of
all my passions that I had scarce proceeded to a
greater length in the expression of my rage than by
turning a haggard look of reproach upon the assailant,
when an accident happened which changed the
current of my feelings. The little reprobate who
had immortalized himself by so capital a shot, had

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given such energy and strength to the cast, that he
lost his balance, pitched forward, and at the very
moment I looked down upon him, plumped, with a
dismal shriek, into the river, which was deep, and the
current strong. It was evident, the little dog could
not swim; and such was the terror which the catastrophe
caused among his companions, that they lost
the only oar they had in the boat, and were incapable
of rendering him any assistance.

In the meanwhile, the hero of the scene, whose
disaster I regarded with sentiments of complacency
and approbation, as being nothing more than he
deserved for the unprovoked injury he had done
me, sunk to the bottom, whence in a moment he
came whirling and gasping to the surface, and was
swept by the tide against the sloop's cable, which
he attempted to seize, but without success; for
though he had hold of it for an instant, he was not
able to maintain his grasp. In this state of the adventure,
the little fellow was immediately under me
where I sat on the bowsprit; and as the tide swept
him from the cable, he looked up to me with a
countenance of such terror, and agony, and despair,
mingled with imploring entreaty—though being on
the point of strangling, he was neither able to speak
nor to cry out—that I was suddenly struck with
feelings of compassion. They were the first human
emotions, I believe, that had entered my bosom for
years. And such was the strength of them that,
before I knew what I was doing, I dropped into the
river—gander and all—to save the poor little rascal
from drowning.

Such a feat did not appear to me either very difficult
or dangerous, for I could swim like a duck, and
had had extraordinary experience in the art of saving
life in the water; not, indeed, that I had ever

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performed such service for any body but myself;
but, in my own case, I had almost daily occasion;
for nothing was more common than for Skipper
Duck to take me by the nape of the neck and toss
me overboard, even when on the open sea; though
the mate always threw me a rope to help me on
board again, except when we were becalmed, or at
anchor; in which cases, he left me to take care of
myself. In the present instance, however, as it
proved, the exploit was not destined to be performed
without difficulty; for dropping down with more
hurry than forecast, right before the stem, and with
a force that carried me pretty deep into the water, I
was swept under the shallop's bottom, which, in the
effort to rise to the surface, I managed to strike with
my head, with a violence that would undoubtedly
have finished me, had not that noble excrescence
been in those days of unusual thickness. The shock
was, however, sufficient to stun and confound the
small quantity of wits I possessed, and to such a degree
that I lost my hold of the gander, which, up to
this moment, I had clutched with instinctive care;
besides which, I was swept, before I had time to
recover myself, along the whole of the sloop's bottom;
and this being pretty well studded with barnacles,
young oysters, and the heads of old nails, I had
the satisfaction of enjoying as complete and thorough
a keelhauling as was ever administered to any vagabond
whatever, my jacket, shirt, and back being
scratched all to pieces. Of this, however, as well as
of the loss of the gander, I was for a time quite unconscious,
being confused by the shock my head had
suffered; and the moment I succeeded in passing the
rudder, and reaching the surface, I had all my
thoughts engaged in rescuing the boy, who had now
sunk two or three times, and was, I doubted not,

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sinking for the last time; for he was quite insensible,
when it was my good fortune to reach and seize him
by the collar.

The batteau had, by this time, been borne by the
tide against a projecting wharf, whither I easily
swam with my charge; and then giving him up to his
companions, who had now, by dint of yelling, brought
several men to their assistance, I took to my heels,
hoping to regain the sloop before Captain Duck, who
had gone ashore, should return and discover my absence.
My only way of getting on board was that in
which I had departed, namely, by swimming; and to
this I betook me, by running a little up the stream,
and then leaping again into the river.

My haste, however, was vain; the worthy skipper
reaching the vessel an instant before myself; and
when, having clambered up by the hawser and bobstay,
I succeeded in jumping on deck, I—who was in
such a pickle, what with my clothes torn to shreds,
and dripping with water, and the blood trickling
down my face, as the reader cannot conceive—found
myself confronted with my tyrant face to face. He
gave me a horrible stare of surprise, took one step
forward so as to bring me within reach of his arm,
and exclaimed,—

“You draggle-tailed tadpole! where have you
been?”—which question he accompanied with a
cuff on the right cheek that tossed me full a fathom to
the larboard.

“Please, sir,” said I, in as much terror as my
stupidity was capable of.—“overboard, sir.”

“Overboard, you son of a tinker's cowbell!” cried
my master giving me a cuff with the other hand,
that sent me just as far starboard; “what have you
been doing overboard?”

“Please, sir, saving boy's life, sir,” returned

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unhappy I, beginning to be conscious of the enormity
of my offence.

“Saving a boy's life, blast my fishhooks!” ejaculated
Skipper Duck, knocking me again to larboard:
and here I may as well observe that this was his
usual way of conversing with me, or rather of pointing
his conversation; his stops being usually but
three, a cuff to the right and a cuff to the left, which
he alternated with extreme regularity, at every other
speech; and a full period, used at the close, by which
I was laid as flat as a flagstone. “Saving a boy's
life!” cried the Skipper, boxing me as aforesaid: I
wish all the boys were in Old Nick's side-pocket,
roasting!—Where's the gander?”

The gander? ay, where was the gander? The
question froze my blood: I remembered the loss;
by this time the gander was a mile down stream, if
not already lodged, in divided morsels, in the capacious
jaws of a hundred catfish.

The skipper noticed my confusion, and his face of
a sudden became small, being puckered by an universal
frown, that began at forehead and chin and
the two ears, and tended to the centre, carrying
these several parts before it, till all were blended in
a knot of wrinkles scarce bigger than his nose. He
stretched forth his hand and took me by the hair, of
which I had a mop half as big as my whole body;
and giving his arm a slow motion to and from him,
like the crank-rod, or whatever they call it, of a
locomotive, just as it is getting under way, and
making my head, of course, follow in the same line
of traverse, thundered in my ears,—

“The gander! you twin-born of a horse-mackerel!
where's the gander?”

“Please, sir,” I spluttered out, in a confusion of
intellects that was with me extremely customary

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—“boy was overboard—jumped overboard to save
him—”

“D—n the boy!” quoth my honest master;
“where's the gander?”

“Please, sir, jumped overboard,” I repeated; “got
under the keel; knocked head—senses out, and—
and—”

“And the gander? blast my fish-hooks! the gander?”

“Please, sir; couldn't help—'most drowned—lost
it!”

The skipper's eyes rolled in their sockets, and
he turned them to heaven, as if to invoke thunderbolts
of vengeance on my guilty head. Then taking
a quid of tobacco, to compose his nerves, he made
me a speech, importing, first, that he had bought me
of old Mother Moll at the price of a ten-gallon keg
of rum; secondly, that I was not worth the tenth
part of a sous-marquee, or ten scales of a red herring;
thirdly, that I was the ugliest wall-eyed, shock-headed
son of a ship's monkey he had ever laid eyes on;
fourthly, that he had always said I would come to
the gallows, without even the grace of arriving at
the yard-arm; fifthly, that he had borne as many of
my dog's tricks as mortal man could; sixthly, that
the loss of the gander was the most atrocious piece
of cold-blooded knavery he had ever heard of, for
which hanging was too good for me; and seventhly
and lastly, that as it was his duty to take a father's care
of me, he would forthwith proceed to give me the
handsomest trouncing I had ever had in my whole
life, blast his fish-hooks. And this oration, which
was interlarded with more profane execrations than
I desire to repeat, being ended, he kicked and dragged
me along into the cabin; where, seizing up a
rope's end, he fell to work upon my half naked body

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with a vigour that, I think, would have ended in his
killing me outright; had not fate sent me assistance
in the person of a friend—it was the first one I ever
had—whom the accident of the morning had gained
me, all unknown to myself.

The little boy whom I had saved from drowning,
was, as it happened, the son of a worthy and wealthy
gentleman, a physician, of that town, who chanced
to be nigh at hand, when I landed the little fellow
on the wharf; and being drawn thither, among others,
by the cries of the children, had the happiness to
find his child already restored to his senses, and suffering
no inconvenience from the catastrophe, except
a good ducking and a hearty fright. He took pains
to inform himself on the spot of the particulars of
the accident, which a little inquiry among the boys
soon put him in possession of, including all the circumstances
of the attack, as well as of my instrumentality
in saving the graceless urchin; and he was
pleased to express as much approbation as surprise,
at what he called my magnanimity—a word, by the
by, which, when he afterwards delivered it into my
own ears, filled me with consternation, as from its
bigness, I supposed it must mean something very
horrible. Nay, his feelings becoming more interested,
when he discovered from what a wretched
looking little imp (for, it seems, I had passed him,
while running up the wharves, and he had noticed
my squalid appearance,) the good act had proceeded,
he determined to visit the shallop on the instant, to
do me reparation for the injuries I had received, as
well as to reward me for my humanity—which word
also, when he pronounced it, struck me as a very
terrible one, though not so awful as “magnanimity.”
He accordingly procured a boat, and, in company
with several other persons, immediately came on

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

board, the visit being for me the most opportune in
the world, as the honest skipper was threshing me,
as he himself expressed it, “within an inch of my
life,” and was, indeed, so enwrapped in the business,
that he was entirely unconscious of the entrance of
the visitors into the vessel and the cabin, until my
new friend, shocked and enraged at his brutality,
brought it to an end by suddenly knocking him
down with his cane.

My miserable, wretched appearance—for besides
my starveling looks, the blood was still streaming
over my face—and the inhuman tyranny to which
he thus saw me exposed, operated to such a degree
on the benevolent feelings of this most excellent man,
that he determined to release me from my skipper's
clutches altogether; which he immediately effected,
by carrying me ashore to his own house, where he
dressed my wounds, and had me washed and clothed
in decent attire.

Nor did his good offices rest here; for having questioned
me, and discovered what a friendless creature
I really was, and how much I had suffered from the
cruelty of the skipper, his indignation was roused to
such a pitch, that he proceeded to lodge an information
before a magistrate, who immediately granted
a warrant for Duck's apprehension, and he was in a
few hours laid by the heels in the common jail; when,
being tried, he was mulcted in a heavy fine, and
punished also with a month's imprisonment. And
this punishment not seeming severe enough to certain
worthy citizens, whose choler had been exceedingly
inflamed by the developments of his cruelty
that took place at the trial, the skipper was no sooner
released from prison than they carried him aboard
his own vessel, where, after subjecting him to the
process of keel-hauling, administered in a much

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

more regular way than had happened in my case,
they shaved his head and tarred and feathered him
from top to toe; and then ordered him to get under
way, never to appear again in their waters, under
pain of being hung from his own cross-trees—an
injunction which, I believe, the scoundrel very faithfully
observed, for I never heard of his being again
seen in that neighborhood.

As for me, the events of that day had—although
I knew it not—operated an entire and thorough
change on all my future prospects. I had gained a
friend and protector, who was as able as he was willing
to repair the mischiefs I had suffered in body
and mind, and to guard me for the future from wrong
and outrage. And all this was, as I may say, the
result of my own action—of the indulgence of a
natural feeling or instinct, of the laudableness of
which I was entirely ignorant. I had done a good
act, and—like the young Pawnee Indian,[1] who saved
the life of a female captive, without knowing he had
done a good deed, until his Christian rewarders told
him so—I did not know it. And for this reason, I
certainly deserved neither credit nor recompense;
but I would that all good actions were as well rewarded.

eaf019v1.n1

[1] Petelesharoo, son of Latelesha, or the Knife-Chief, head of the
Pawnee-Loups, who cut from the stake, where his nation had devoted
her to the flames, a Paduca, or Ietan girl, and carried her
in safety to her own tribe; for which heroic act, he was presented
with a medal by the young ladies of a seminary at Washington.
The young savage, in returning his thanks, declared, with great
simplicity, or good manners—for the assertion looks very much
like a stretch of politeness—that he “did it in ignorance,” and “did
not know that he had done good, until his sisters, by giving him a
medal, told him so.” See Morse's Indian Reports; and also Long's
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

p019-034 CHAPTER III. Robin Day begins his education, and advances in the opinion of the world.

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

My patron, Dr. Howard, (for that was his name,)
was not content with merely releasing me from
bondage, and punishing my tyrant, but carried his
goodness still further. The few hints I was able to
give him in relation to the shipwreck, led him to
indulge a kind of hope that my parents were perhaps
living, and that I might be restored to their
arms; in consequence of which, he not only instituted
inquiries into the circumstance, but even paid
two different visits to the coast, where he made every
effort to sift the affair to the bottom. His exertions
were, however, of little avail; the reasons for silence
which I had mentioned, were still in operation, and
kept every man's memory under lock and key. No
one of those interested as actors in the scene had the
slightest knowledge or recollection of the affair; there
were a great many wrecks, they said, on their coast,
and they could not pretend to remember them, or
to say who came ashore on them; they knew in
general, no such personage as little Robin Rusty,
though some professed to have heard the name, and
some believed there had been a boy so called, whom
old Mother Moll had picked up some where, they
had never troubled themselves to ask where. In

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

short, they were determined to hold their tongues;
and all the information that my patron ever succeeded
in acquiring was obtained from persons living
at a distance from the scene; and, indeed, the further
they were off, the more they seemed to know of the
matter. The only difficulty was, that no two agreed
in telling the same story; from which, as well as
from the thousand manifest falsehoods and contradictions
with which the relation was overburthened,
it was clear these worthy personages had gained their
intelligence from their own imaginations, and in
reality knew nothing more than the inquirer himself.

He might, perhaps, have gained all the information
he sought, from the old beldam, Mother Moll,
who was now grown decrepid and helpless with age,
had been long abandoned by her vagabond son, and
was dragging out existence in the most hopeless
poverty; but she had reached the period of dotage
and mere oblivion, and was incapable of rendering
him any assistance. It was with the greatest difficulty
she could be made even to remember my name;
and when she did, and was questioned particularly
concerning me, she, by some unaccountable perversion
of association, always confounded me with her
son Ikey, whose history, including all his monkeytricks,
and sometimes mine with them, his sundry
rebellions against the maternal authority, and final
desertion of her, she was very willing to tell, so long
as her memory served; but that was never long.
She seemed to have some glimmering recollections
of the wreck; but they were not such as could be
turned to profit; and as to the date, which she sometimes
threw twenty years back, and sometimes but
a few months, nothing of the least account could be
gained from her.

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

All that my patron, therefore, learned, after every
inquiry, was no more than what he knew before;
namely, that there had been a wreck, and that I had
come ashore in it: but of the exact period of the
catastrophe, of the name and character of the vessel,
of the fate of the crew, and other the most interesting
and important particulars, he knew nothing.
The discouragement which he suffered did not, however,
prevent his making the only other effort that
remained. He drew up a brief account—if account
it could be called—of the occurrence, and caused it
to be inserted in several of the newspapers of the
day, in hopes it might attract the eye of some one
interested, and thence lead to further developments
that might finally bring my parentage to light. But
the effort resulted in nothing. Some few persons,
merchants who had lost vessels, and others who had
been deprived of friends, wrote to him for further
particulars, which he had not to give; and there the
matter dropped. Whatever might be my good qualities,
nobody thought me worth claiming.

In the meanwhile, neither my protector's inquiries
nor their failure of success, troubled me in the
least. I had arrived at a fate which satisfied all my
youthful longings, inasmuch as I had plenty to eat
and drink, could take my fill of sleep whenever I
wanted it, and had no fear of an hourly drubbing.
In the enjoyment of these blisses, and in the kitchen
corner, whither my instincts and ambition both carried
me, I should have been content to pass my
existence, contending for nothing but the warmest
rug and the hugest cast-bit, with no rivals but Towzer
the house dog and Tabby the tom-cat. A nobler
strife, and competitors more distinguished, were
subjects that entered neither into my desires nor
thoughts. I was entirely of opinion that the life of

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

a scullion in a rich man's kitchen was the happiest
that human being could lead—a life for a skipper,
or the gods themselves.

This grovelling disposition there were some who
considered an inborn one, a characteristic of a naturally
low and vulgar spirit; though I am very well
convinced it was all owing to Skipper Duck and his
villanous treatment; and certain it is, had any nobler
feelings ever existed in my bosom, they could not
have survived the long course of debasing cruelty
to which I had been subjected. The truth is, it had
resulted in quenching every spark of intellect and
spirit I ever possessed, in stultifying, in stupefying, in
reducing me to a condition very little above that of
a mere animal; so that, I verily believe, my old prototype
of Cyprus, he that was


Cymon call'd, which signifies a brute;
So well his name did with his nature suit,—
was the Seven Wise Masters of Greece all in one
body, compared with me, whom every body agreed
in considering not merely a dolt and blockhead of
unusual barrenness, but a kind of Orson, or Wild-boy
Peter, on whose nature, as on Caliban's, “nurture
could never stick,” and every effort at instruction
must be entirely thrown away.

And in this opinion, I am sorry to say, my benevolent
patron also joined, after he had worn out his
patience in the vain effort to awake my dormant faculties,
which he declared were of so low an order as
to be incapable of any cultivation, and so, in despair,
left me to myself, to my own enjoyments, and in the
honourable office—the only one he deemed me fit
for—of scullion and turnspit;—my cooking abilities,
though sufficient for the purposes of Skipper Duck,
not being, in his opinion, brilliant enough for the

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

appointment of Commander in Chief of the culinary
department in his household—which was, indeed,
very capably filled by an old negro, whom we called
Don Pedro, a slave from one of the Spanish West
India Islands.

Thus consigned to contempt, and given over as a
case of hopeless stupidity, I must have remained
among pots and pattypans, an ornament of the
kitchen, for life, had it not been for the good offices
of two other friends who were not so willing to desert
me. The first of these was Nature, who, having
been outraged in my person for years, and, in fact,
driven out of it, now returned, and having nothing
to oppose her, save the craziness of the mansion,
began a course of renovation, which, though slow
and at first imperceptible, was destined sooner or
later to make itself manifest. The second was my
patron's son Tommy—his only son, and therefore a
spoiled one—to whose exploit with the oyster-shell
I owed my advancement. The little gentleman, who
was my junior by at least three years, though my
equal in size, and infinitely superior in every thing
that marks the intelligent being—such were the advantages
of a parent's love and care—was by no
means the malicious and wicked imp his unprovoked
attack on me seemed to declare; but, on the contrary,
a very amiable and generous boy, although wild and
prankish, and easily led into mischief, as most boys
are. Perhaps I should say, as most boys were; for
the juveniles of the present generation, as I have observed,
are a much more manly and rational race
than their predecessors of the last, the difference resulting,
I suppose, from a better system of education.
The boys of my day, I declare, were the greatest
scoundrels conceivable, quarrelsome, vindictive, and
cruel, oppressors of one another and of every living

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

thing that was too weak to resist them; in short,
Neroes and Domitians in miniature. And those who
were not born with these happy characteristics,
hastened to get inoculated with them; as nothing
was held more contemptible, because evincing a
babyish, cowardly spirit, than a peaceable temper,
and tenderness to cats and dogs. My little friend
Tommy was of a mixed class, having been born with
spirit enough to adventure into every excess, and
yet with milder and kindlier feelings, that, if carefully
governed, might have made him the best of
boys; and he was of just such a character as to be
able, at any moment, to enter with enthusiasm upon
the torture of a tabbycat, and burst into tears, the
next, at the sight of her dying agonies.

The little fellow's best feelings had been enlisted
by the service I rendered him by plucking him from
the water; and his father had made him aware—if,
indeed, his own conscience had not—of, the meanness
and cruelty he had been guilty of in attacking
such a poor, inoffensive vagabond as I; and the end
was, that Master Tommy was anxious to repair the
mischief he had done, and do me some important
service in return. He straightway contracted a
fiery friendship for me, which he showed in a thousand
different ways; and especially by cramming me
with oranges and sugar-plums, and other infantile
luxuries, such as had never before blessed my lips;
and, what was better still, by appointing me his chief
playmate.

It was Anaxagoras, I think, the philosopher of
Lampsacus, who, being asked at his death-hour, by
the magistrates of the city, what he wished to be
done in commemoration of him, desired they would
give the boys a holiday on the anniversary of his
death, and let them play over his grave. This

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

sentiment is generally considered as proving that Anaxagoras
must have been an uncommonly amiable old
gentleman, who had spared the birch in his school,
and was determined the boys of Lampsacus should
be as happy after his death as before. To my mind,
it proves a good deal more, and shows that the philosopher
was a philosopher in earnest, who knew
the influence of childish play—because an institution
of Nature herself—in expanding the powers
of the childish mind; and therefore aimed, in his
festival, as much at the improvement as the happiness
of his youthful heirs. Of the justice and truth
of this remark I am the more strongly persuaded,
as I believe I can trace the first efforts of expansion
in my own spirit to the influence of boyish sports;
and I am convinced that I learned more by playing
leap-frog and cock-horse with Master Tommy Howard
than by thumbing all the hornbooks and primers
his father ever put into my hands.

It must be recollected that the sports of childhood—
those first and truest sources of enjoyment, of
health and of happiness—were vanities I had never
known, nor even dreamed of; all my tender years
having been passed in captivity and servitude, and
every hour and moment devoted to some infernal
drudgery, as killing to the mind as the body. The
smile and laugh of happy vacancy, the shout of merriment,
the whistle, the song, the uproar of play, were
music that had never visited my ears; which were,
indeed seldom invaded by any thing, except abusive
language and the hard palms of my honest skipper.
I was now, for the first time, to be made acquainted
with such joys; and the delight I experienced from
them was only equalled by their happy effects on
my benighted spirit. The change was speedily
manifested in my visage and person, the former of

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

which gradually lost the look of stupefaction that
had hitherto marked it; while the latter took a sudden
start, and grew out of the similitude of a starved
ape, which it had first borne: though, I must confess,
as far as stature is concerned, I have not even
yet entirely got over the effects of my early sufferings.
A still better evidence of the transformation
that had been effected, was soon shown; for little
Tommy now taking upon himself the office of a
schoolmaster, ambitious to succeed in an exploit
which his father had pronounced impracticable, I
was actually, through his instrumentalily, taught to
read; and that before the good doctor dreamed that
the attempt had been made to teach me; and, indeed,
the first intimation he had of the miracle was
when Tommy carried me in triumph before him,
to display the fruits of his skill and enterprise.

The work of regeneration thus commenced by
the son, the parent was determined it should not
languish for want of encouragement on his part;
and the result was that, in a short time, I was translated
from the kitchen to his study, and from thence
to a public school, where it was my good fortune to
make such progress as entirely satisfied my patron;
who from that moment treated me rather as a child
than a poor dependant on his charity. And there
unhappily occurred, soon after, an event which,
while it brought mourning into his family, advanced
me to a still higher niche in his affections. This
was nothing less than the death of poor Tommy,
who, to the eternal grief of his parents, and myself—
for I loved him with all my heart—having now
learned to swim a little, was drowned, while bathing
with other boys in the river. How the catastrophe
happened was not known, as none of his companions
were by him at the moment; and, indeed, he

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

was not missed by them, until they had finished
their sports and gone on shore to dress; when the
sight of his clothes reminded them of his disappearance;
nor was his body ever recovered. He was,
as I have mentioned, an only son—I might almost
have said, an only child; for, though Dr. Howard had
another, a daughter, who was a year older than Tommy,
yet she was, and, from her youth up, had been,
of so frail a constitution, that nothing but her father's
skill and extreme care seemed to keep her
alive, and few believed her term of existence could
extend to many years. The death of Tommy was,
therefore, almost as heavy a blow as if he had been,
in reality, an only child; and it plunged his father
into a kind of despair that lasted several months;
after which he gradually recovered his spirits, and
began to treat me with uncommon marks of regard,
transferring to me in a great degree the affection
which had once been lavished on his son. In this
he was imitated by his wife, an excellent woman,
who had always distinguished me by her favour, and
now carried her benevolence to such a pitch that, as
I have been told, she once even proposed they
should adopt me as their child, and give me their
name; and, although the good doctor did not altogether
consent to carry the matter so far, I was
treated by them both as if the act of affiliation had
really occurred, and also by the world at large—that
is to say, the people of our town, who all considered
that my fortune was now certainly made. My
name was so far changed as to make it read Robin
Day, instead of Robin Rusty; the Day, I presume,
having been borrowed from my skipper.

p019-043 CHAPTER IV. Three years at school, under the ancient system of education; with an account of Robin's rival, the heroic Dicky Dare, and the war of the Feds and Demies.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

In the meanwhile, I accommodated myself to the
change with surprising readiness; and, as I grew
older, I assumed the deportment, and gradually took
upon me all the airs of a rich man's son, bearing my
honours, and the favours of my protectors, with as
much grace as if I had been born to them; and this
presumption, as it was indicative of a gentlemanly
spirit, and had the good fortune to be backed by a
gentlemanly little body—for I was grown, as every
body said, quite a pretty little fellow—served the
purpose of endearing me still further to my pseudoparents;
who suffered me to fume and pout, to swell
and strut, to play the impertinent and tyrant, and
indulge all the other humours of a spoiled child,
yielding to them with as much dutiful submissiveness
as if they had been my parents in reality.
And, certainly, so long as my good patroness lived—
which, unhappily, was not long, for she died suddenly,
of an affection of the heart, in but little more
than a year after her son—even Tommy himself had
not been more effectually humoured to the top of
his bent.

But however bravely I bore it in my patron's

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

house, there was one place where my pretensions
were not so readily submitted to; that is, at school,
in which the only way to obtain supremacy, I found,
was to fight for it, and drub down all opposition.

As I have represented the associates of my boyhood
in no very amiable colours, as being neither
Cupids nor cherubs, such as the poets delight to picture
them, it may be supposed my delineations were
meant to apply to my schoolmates especially; which
is very true: only that the picture was then only
half drawn, being a sketch designed only to embrace
those general characteristics, which I supposed would
apply to the whole race of schoolboys all over the
continent. My own particular associates at school
were individuals of a genus as much worse than the
boys in general of that day, as the latter class was
worse than the boys of this; in fact, a set of such
imps and scapegallows as would now be considered
fit only for a House of Refuge: in which opinion I
think the reader will agree, when he has followed
me through a few more chapters; although I shall
speak of no more of their rogueries than are necessary
as parts and illustrations of my own history.

In the first place, then, they were all sons of Ishmael,
at war with themselves and every body else;
and firmly persuaded, that, as courage was by far the
highest and noblest of all human attributes, so strife
and battle were the most delightful of human enjoyments.
No new comer was allowed the freedom of
the school, until he had undergone a sound drubbing;
which was commonly inflicted the first day of
his appearance; and I remember well how greatly I
was astonished, on my first day, when, at the breaking
up of school, a manikin of about my own size,
whom I had never seen before, suddenly marched
up to me, and scratched my buttons, (which, it

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

appears, was a signal of defiance to mortal combat;)
and, upon my replying only by an innocent stare,
fetched me a cuff that sent me sprawling; a feat that
was instantly rewarded by shouts and cries, from
some, of, “Hurrah, Jim! give it to him handsome!”
while others roared out, “Fair play! Let him up!—
Hurrah for the monkey-faced little fellow!” meaning
me; for there were some who heroically took my
side of the question, and encouraged me to get up
and fight like a good fellow. This was a piece of
advice I was compelled to take whether I would or
not, or otherwise be trounced, without making resistance;
and, accordingly, I fell to work with great
spirit, and had the satisfaction, after half an hour's
combat, yard and yard arm, as the sailors say, of
coming off second best—that is, of being flogged
until I could stand up to be beaten no longer.

But, although thus vanquished, I gained a great
deal of credit by the constancy with which I endured
the pommelling: and the more particularly as I
refused to the last moment to “holler enough,” as
my adversary, with great magnanimity, bawled at
every blow; and when the affair was over, I was
complimented on all sides as being “a knotty little
feller, that had the game in him, and would be good
fight some day or other;” and encouragingly assured
that I had only been whipped, “because I did
not know how to fight;” which was very true: as,
from never having been in boys' company, I had
never been in combat before in my whole life.

As for the credit I gained by enduring the beating
so well, and not obeying the charge to cry enough,
I am not so certain I deserved it; for, as to the latter
point, the words were to me heathen Greek all, and
I did not understand what was required of me; and
as to the former, I had been so hardened to

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

drubbing in the hands of my skipper, (which was the
only benefit I ever derived from the villain,) that I
cared no more for it, unless when it came in excess,
than for the puffing of the winds.

This callousness or indifference to the pain of cuffing,
gave me, with the honourable nickname of Sy
Tough, which the boys presently bestowed upon
me, an infinite advantage over all my schoolmates,
as I soon discovered; and as my only deficiency was
a lack of knowledge and skill in the art pugilistic,
which, praised be my comrades, they gave me every
opportunity to acquire, by engaging me in one battle
at least, every day, I had the satisfaction, before
my first quarter was out, of drubbing master Jim,
my first antagonist, to his heart's content; and, in a
few months more, of extending the same favour to
three fourths of all the boys in school, so that I came
to be looked upon, in time, as a young Julius Cæsar,
a hero, a paragon of schoolboys.

How—as my disposition was naturally pacific,
and as averse from squabbling and contention as
could be desired—I ever came to be engaged in so
many battles as it was my fate to fight—and, I think,
for three years, they must have averaged at the rate
of at least one and a half each day—I am scarce
able to say; but, I believe, the chief cause was, that
my schoolmates so willed it, there being a standing
conspiracy among them to get up a battle whenever
it was possible; each and every one of them, though
not always fond of fighting in his own person, being
delighted when others could be driven into it. This
passion was especially observable among the bigger
boys, who were never so well content as in setting
their juniors by the ears; and, indeed, I have known
them so bent upon their purpose, that when they
found it impossible, by fair means, to engage a pair

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

of reluctant belligerents in affray, they did not hesitate
to flog them into it.

With this class of worthies, the leaders of the
school, it was my fate to become a favourite; and
they proved their affection by engaging me in a
never-ending round of conflicts; which, from my
simplicity, ignorance, disregard of fisticuffs, and
above all, a natural facility of being led by the nose,
was no very difficult task.

In this way, it happened, that, in the course of
two or three years, I had been involved in battle
with every soul in the school (which varied in
number from fifty to seventy boys,) that could be
considered in any degree a suitable antagonist; and,
as the toughness and insensibility to pain I have
mentioned, gave me an advantage that no one else
possessed, I usually came off victor; until, at last, there
was but one other boy of my own degree who was
able to dispute the palm with me.

This was Master Richard, or Dicky Dare, the son
of an old captain of the Revolution, who had infused
into his son's heart, the spirit not merely of a
soldier, but of a whole regiment, and filled his head
with drums, trumpets, ambition, glory and other
martial trumpery, to such degree, that there was no
room in it for any thing else. He was about my own
age, i. e. about the age I was supposed to be—though
somewhat taller and stronger; so that I should never
have been able to contend with him for superiority,
had it not been for the above mentioned toughness;
and he had, like myself, under the direction of the
seniors, drubbed all the rest of the school. Nothing
remained, then, for our leaders but to pit us against
each other; and—as neither was found the better
man—to incite us to the tug of war as often as possible.
In this latter particular, they succeeded so

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

well, that, after awhile, one battle a day between us
became a matter of course, and was as regularly expected
by the whole school, and ourselves, at the
breaking up in the morning, as the dinners that were
to follow it. And this kind of diversion we practised
daily, to the infinite delight of our comrades, for
more than a year; until, in fact, we, in our turn, had
become big boys, and leaders and masters of the
whole herd; which, like conquerors, we divided
between us.

Nor let it be supposed, that, during this long
period of strife, there was any peculiar animosity,
or ill feeling, betwixt my rival and me; on the contrary,
we drubbed one another into mutual friendship,
in less than a month after the rivalry began;
after which we continued to fight because it seemed
to be expected of us, and because, from having fallen
into the habit, we had come to consider it as very
good pastime. Nor, when we ceased, as after a
time we did, to pommel one another, did we leave
it off from disgust of combat; but only that we
might organize a plan devised by the martial Dicky,
and recommence hostilities on a grander scale.

My rival, although pronounced by the master the
greatest blockhead in school, (and truly, he never
knew a lesson, that I, out of my friendship had not
drilled into him,) was, nevertheless, the soul of honour
and generosity, and a prodigious genius into the bargain;
nature having intended him to rule the million,
and trample nations under his feet; though an unfortunate
accident caused him to leave the world before
his work was completed. The military spirit, which,
it was said, he had inherited from his father, and
which had hitherto been indicated only by a love of
fisticuffs, was beginning to blaze out its nobler attributes;
ambition, the love of rule, and a desire

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

and resolution to fight his further battles, not with
his own hands merely, but with the fists of his inferiors.
He was determined to organize his adherents,
who made up one half the school, into an army,
of which he was to be General; and he desired me
to do the same with mine; with which forces, after
having disciplined them to our minds, we should
fight our battles like true soldiers.

The notion was as agreeable to our adherents as
to ourselves; and, in a very brief space, behold us,
to wit, General Dicky Dare, and General Sy Tough,
(for by that sobriquet my school-mates always preferred
to distinguish me,) each at the head of his
train-bands, all in Coventry uniform, tag, rag, and
bobtail, with shingle-swords and broomstick-muskets,
banners of old paper-hangings, and full bands
of music—for, in truth, every soul, the generals only
excepted, was musician as well as soldier—in which
old kettles and frying-pans contended with conches
and tin-horns, and fifes and pitch-pipes with penny-whistles,
jews-harps, and comb-organs. In such
array, and all eager for the battle, we were wont to
meet, of Saturday afternoons, on the school house
green; and, having saluted each other with a preliminary
shower or two of pebbles and potatoes,
march gallantly up to the charge, and to it pell-mell
like brave fellows; so that the plain of Troy and
Donny brook-fair were mere nothings in comparison.
And such battles, fought with extreme rancour, and
at an expense of numberless broken heads, and, once
or twice, a broken bone, we never could give over,
until the towns-people, who by no means encouraged
such excesses, fell foul of us with switches and horsewhips,
and so routed both armies together.

Such interference we deemed a great hardship, as
the sport was in great vogue among us; and the more

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

particularly as we had dubbed our parties, respectively,
Feds and Demies—that is, Federalists and
Democrats—in imitation of the grown children, our
fathers of the country at large, and thought we had
as much right as they, under the above titles, to
knock one another on the head. But the enemy, or
the armed intervention, prevailed; switches and
horsewhips were weapons we could not resist; and
both armies, having been effectually routed half a
dozen times, were finally disbanded, to the unspeakable
grief of my great rival, General Dare; who
mourned his discomfiture in sorrow and humiliation,
but was too great of soul to despair. His spirit
was, indeed, not to be vanquished by one rebuff; and
his genius soon supplied, in a new undertaking, a
nobler field of fame than that from which we had
been driven.

p019-051 CHAPTER V. The patriot Dare preaches the doctrine of schoolboys' rights, and the young Republicans strike for freedom.

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

The seminary of which I have spoken under the
disparaging name of school, enjoyed the nobler title
of Academy, to which it had the better right, as its
affairs were administered by Trustees, who never
troubled their heads about it, and was intended to
indoctrinate boys in all kinds of learning, from spelling
in two syllables up to the Pons Asinorum and
Hic-hæc-hoc. The only difficulty, as some esteemed
it, was that the task of dispensing these multifarious
subjects of education was made the duty of one single
teacher, there being neither assistant nor usher
in the school: but the duty was, after all, no great
matter in a country where it is every man's business
to be a jack of all trades, and capable of turning
his hand to any thing.

The worthy person to whom was committed this
weighty charge, I have not yet spoken of; nor do I
now think it necessary to say any thing more of
him than that his name was Burley, his nickname
Old Bluff, and that he was a very good sort of person,
who was so occupied in horsing and trouncing
his scholars all day long, that he had little time left
for any thing else, and in particular, none at all for
directing their studies.

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

This latter circumstance, as we had the true schoolboy
detestation of hard lessons, endeared him very
greatly to our affections; though there was a good
deal of grumbling on account of the trouncing; so
that, to balance matters fairly, as he lost as much
good will by one peculiarity as he gained by the
other, he may be said to have occupied a very doubtful
place in our regards. Unfortunately, however,
he chose to side with the town's people in their opposition
to the warlike pastime just mentioned,
which he professed to consider a very outrageous
irregularity, disreputable to the school and to him,
its master, and calling for the severest measures to
put it down. These measures involved, of course,
a prodigious amount of flogging; of which, though
all had their proportion, a principal share fell to the
commanders in chief of the two armies—that is, to
Dickey Dare and myself. The school had been ever
a Babel: but it was now Pandemonium itself, nothing
being heard from morning till night, but the
thwacks of the birch and ferule, and the yells of
infant innocence. Inexpressible were the terror, the
confusion, the lamentation that prevailed; and broken
spirits and broken hearts, and tingling palms and
smarting backs, were the lot of all.

In this exigency, the genius of General Dare,
whose soul only grew the bigger under oppression,
and whose ambition took a higher flight for
every ignominious elevation upon a schoolmate's
back, devised an expedient, than which nothing
could have been better contrived to obviate every
difficulty, to free us from present pangs, and secure
us from all future tyranny. Taking advantage of
our assembling together, one morning after school—
alas, assembling no longer to fight or play, but to
mourn our sufferings and invoke execrations on the

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

head of our tyrant—he invited us to follow him into
a neighbouring grave-yard, (a favourite place of
meeting, whenever we had any mischief to concoct;)
where, mounting upon a grave stone—a proper rostrum
for an occasion so solemn—doffing his hat with
the graceful courtesy, and puckering up his visage
with the zeal for the public good, of a veteran stumporator,
he began to harangue us in the following
terms:

“I tell you what, boys and fellers,” he cried, jumping
in medias res with the directness of a Spartan,
“there's no two words about the matter, and the long
and short of it is, Old Bluff is the biggest old tyrant
that ever was, and treats us like slaves and Guinea
niggers; which is a thing quite unbearable and
scandalous; because as how, this is a free land, and
we are free people, as good as any body else; and
it's agin all law and constitution for any body to
treat any body like a slave, except the niggers;
which is because the niggers is slaves, and not free
people. Now I'll tell you what, by Julius Cæsar,
I've been considering about school-keeping and
flogging the boys; and I've just made it out, they
ha'n't no right, no how, to do no such thing in
America; because as how, we have n't no kings
here, but Presidents, which is made by the people,
and is the people's servants, and has n't no right to
hang people, and cut off their heads and flog 'em;
because how, they a'n't kings, but Presidents; and
it's just the same thing with schoolmasters, for all of
their cutting up like kings, for they a'n't kings, but
only Presidents. Now, you see, this is a free land, and
a republic, which is all freedom and equality; and the
people is n't ruled over by nobody, like England,
and Rome, and Greece, and them foreign parts; but
they governs themselves; and when there's any

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

body to be punished for kicking up, why the people
tells the President, and he gives it to 'em. And
so it's just as clear as coffee, it ought to be the same
thing in a school; for we're the people, and Old
Bluff's only the President; ond Old Bluff has n't no
right to give it to any of us, until we say so; because
as how, we're freemen, by Julius Cæsar! and we
ought to govern ourselves!”

This doctrine, which was worthy a child of the
republic, was highly acceptable to the boys, and
they agreed, nem. con., that Old Bluff had no right
to flog them; but, nevertheless, it was sagaciously
argued, he did flog them; and how were they to help
themselves?

“Why,” said our Demosthenes, with a proud and
resolved look, “just do as our dads did before us;
for if it had n't been for them, we would n't have
had no Presidents over us at all, but kings. For
you must know, we was once slaves, and old king
George, he was king over us; and he carried on as
he liked, and cut off heads, and horsed and flogged
the people, and all that, just like Old Bluff. Well,
you see, the old folks could n't stand that, and they
turned about and they licked him;—father, he was
one of 'em, and he has told me all about it till I'm
tired of it, he makes such long stories about it:
they trounced the old feller: it was what you call
the Revolution. And ever since that, there's been
no more kings to flog us, but only Presidents. And
so here's just my idea: if Old King Bluff won't stop
trouncing, why we'll have a Revolution too, and
we'll turn on him and give it to him—thump him,
the old rascal! thump him like thunder!”

Thump him! thump Old Bluff! The idea was at
first too great for our conceptions, and made us look
aghast. But the spirit of the young patriot, who had

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

delivered the last words with terrible resolution, was
not to be checked. “Thump him's the idea, my
fellers!” he resumed; “and we can do it just as easy
as the old folks thumped King George; because as
how, he's but one man, and we're sixty-four: (sixty-four's
the number, for I was counting you over, all
the morning;) by Julius Cæsar! we're enough to eat
him up! All we want is the pluck: and if we've
only got that, what's one feller of a man among us?”

In short, the young hero made it apparent to the
meanest of our capacities and the weakest of our
hearts, that nothing could be easier than for sixty-four
boys, of whom at least a dozen were full sixteen
years old, and two or three, like himself, nearly a
year older, to bring our tyrant to a reckoning for all
his manifold oppressions and acts of cruelty; and
having debated the matter over again twice or thrice,
to determine upon a plan of proceedings, it was at
last unanimously resolved to begin a revolution forthwith,
for the purpose of dethroning the despot, or
reducing him to the level of a mere president of the
school, and establishing our rights upon a firm republican
basis, to endure for ever.

This resolution, which the democratic reader cannot
but approve, we had an opportunity to put into
practice the very next morning, when our tyrant,
unconscious of the mine about to burst under his feet,
proceeded to begin the business of the school in his
usual way; that is, by calling up for punishment an
unlucky little culprit, whom he judged most worthy
of his favour at that moment. Upon this, the patriotic
Dare, who had offered himself for this trying
duty, rose behind his desk, and catching up a pewter
inkstand of some two pounds in weight, addressed
the astonished autocrat as follows:

“I tell you what, Old Bluff!—that is, Mr. Burley!

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

—we have a sort of resolved, all of us, that this here
eternal horsing and thumping is not the sort of thing
we can stand any longer; because as how, this is a
free country, where the people is all free republican
people, and we boys is as free people as any body
else, and will fight for our rights like our fathers
before us. And so don't touch that boy; for we
won't stand such doings no longer; we won't, by
Julius Cæsar!”

This address, and the menacing attitude which all
the boys, thus encouraged by their patriot leader,
immediately assumed, each grasping at some weapon
or other, a slate or book, or whatever he could pick
up, seemed to have actually petrified the pedagogue,
who turned pale, and sat down, staring around him
as if in a dream; of which the lad whom he had
called up, took advantage to sneak away to his bench;
while the insurgents, not doubting that their tyrant
was actually—to use their own elegant word—cowed
by their display of resolution, began to resume their
seats, uttering murmurs of felicitation and triumph.
The sound awoke the master from his trance; he
sprang up, and grasping his birch, called out in a
most furious voice—“You Dickey Dare-devil, what's
that you?—Come here, you villain, and I'll trounce
you!”

“I won't be trounced,” said Dickey Dare, “except
by a vote of the boys; for I goes on the popular
principle, and —” But Dickey had not time
to finish his sentence; for Burley immediately rushed
forward to seize him, which Dickey was fain to
avoid by leaping over his desk to the floor; where,
being closely followed, he let fly his inkstand, by
which he did great damage to the head of one his
schoolmates, without, however, hurting the master,
and then dropping like a log on the floor, whereby

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

the autocrat, whose legs he dexterously seized upon,
was suddenly overturned, with a shock that left him
for a moment quite breathless. “Now, fellers!—
them that ain't cowards, fall on!” cried the hero to
his fellow conspirators; who, having been somewhat
horrified by the sudden rally of the enemy, now
recovered courage, and rushed upon him pell-mell;
so that when he recovered from the shock of his
fall, not Gulliver himself, waking from his first nap
in Lilliput, was more multitudinously overrun by
the bodies, or more hopelessly secured in the toils of
his pygmy foes.

“Bang away,” roared General Dare, the patriot;
“down goes all tyrants! Freedom and equality for
ever! All them that's got sore bones, pay him up
old scores.”

Horrible were the din and confusion that now
prevailed; and horrible also, for a moment, were
the struggles of the downfallen monarch; who, however,
being somewhat troubled with an asthma,
became after a time completely exhausted and incapable
of further resistance; upon which Master
Dare demanded handkerchiefs to bind him securely;
which being effected, this incomparable putter-down
of tyrants snatched up a birchen twig, and dispensed,
with uncommon coolness, a dozen thwacks upon
the victim's shoulders. Nor did he rest here, but
passing the rod from hand to hand, compelled every
member of the new born republic to administer, in
like manner, the same number of blows; which
were, in general, laid on with exceeding good will.
This being accomplished, he called for three cheers;
after which we all took to our heels, leaving the deposed
ruler to his meditations.

The result of this exploit exceeded our most
sanguine expectations. We had our misgivings,

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

when it was over, as to its effects upon the good
people of the town, especially upon our parents and
guardians; who, we feared, might espouse the enemy's
interests, and exact a terrible retribution.
But, as our good fortune would have it, Burley was
by no means a favourite of the people, his manners
being stiff and disagreeable, and his severity in
school occasionally made the subject of remark and
disapproval; and his misadventure, which was indeed
surprising and ridiculous enough, excited much
more mirth than commiseration. The disgrace of
the thing, added to this want of sympathy, and the
impossibility of obtaining any satisfaction or reparation,
for he was ashamed to carry his complaints
before a magistrate, drove the poor fellow half mad;
so that he packed up his effects, and in two days
decamped from the town, without any one knowing
whither he had gone.

p019-059 CHAPTER VI. The Academy is converted into a Republic; and how it prospered under its Presidents.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

The exploit was productive also of another effect
extremely advantageous to our schoolboy interests.
It set the town people to discussing the merits
of the flogging system of education; which being
now brought under consideration for the first time,
was pronounced by the majority entirely unsuited
to the character and genius of a republican people;
whose children, it was demonstrated, ought to be
brought up with the highest ideas of personal independence
and honour, of freedom and equality, which
the tyranny of the rod must inevitably beat out of
their tender spirits. To subject them to the sway of a
despot in youth, was to prepare them for slavery in
their riper years, to render them the ready prey of
any designing demagogue, who might aim at the
liberties of the people. In short, this question (there
being a minority opposed to the new doctrine,) produced
a furious ferment in the town, and would, I
doubt not, in time, have resulted in an entire change
in the State Government; for it was fast assuming a
political aspect; when it was put an end to by the
minority yielding the point, and agreeing with the
others that the Academy should thenceforth be governed
on republican principles—that is, that there
should be no more flogging.

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

In pursuance of this resolve, a new teacher was
sought for, capable of administering Hic-hæc-hoc on
the new system; and a worthy personage, who had
previously made application for the vacancy, and
was willing to try the experiment, was engaged, and
forthwith entered upon his Presidential labours.

The experiment, in his hands, lasted only a fortnight;
for whether it was that he was at heart opposed
to the system, or that we were as yet too
young in liberty to know how to enjoy the blessing
in moderation, it is very certain that, at the expiration
of the second week, he summoned the Trustees
together, assured them that the republican system of
schoolkeeping was all moonshine, and declared that
unless he was permitted to resort to the ultima
ratio pædagogorum, i. e. the birch, to maintain his
authority, he must give up his charge altogether.
And as he was as resolute in his demand as the
Trustees were in refusing it, the controversy ended
in his immediate abdication.

A new teacher was soon obtained, who warmly
approved of the new principle, and averred, that,
from his experience, boys were more easily, as well
as more profitably, governed by appealing to their
pride and good sense than to their palms and shoulders—
that the rod, which always left the memory
and taint of dishonour, or any kind of bodily punishment,
did more harm than good—that he had never
trounced a lad in his life; but in extreme cases, had
found that exposing the culprit to the ridicule of his
playmates, was sufficient, and, indeed, the most effectual
punishment that could be inflicted. And this
kind of punishment he proposed to administer by
means of a foolscap or ass's head, I know not which
he called it, (but I remember it had long ears, with
little bells all over it,) to be clapped on the offender's

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

head; and this the trustees, after he had displayed it
for their inspection and admiration on his own
head, (which, I think, it must have become exceedingly,)
agreed he should be permitted to introduce
into the school.

The first trial was unfortunately made upon the
poll of General Dickey Dare, for some slight
offence—I believe, whistling Yankee Doodle in the
midst of a recitation, of which he was growing
tired—who took it in great dudgeon, and indeed,
flung it out the window; a freedom that the President,
forgetting his horror of all bodily punishment,
resisted by a furious box on the ear. This outrage,
the more intolerable, as all now knew that the
trustees themselves had espoused our cause, and forbidden
flogging in toto, was instantly avenged by a
volley of inkstands from all quarters of the room;
by which the aggressor was so amazed and terrified
that he immediately leaped out of the same window
that had given exit to the foolscap, which, with himself,
was never more seen in the Academy.

The next teacher obtained, met the views of all
concerned, being a very amiable, indolent personage
who agreed the more readily to adopt the republican
system, as he had just brains enough to perceive it
would save him a vast deal of trouble. He seemed
very well content we should do as we pleased, get
our lessons when we liked, and as we liked, come
in and go out, laugh, talk, play, fight, or do any
thing else just as we thought proper; a degree of
forbearance that won our entire love and respect,
which we were accustomed to show by peppering
him, whenever he was in a brown study, with potato
popguns and showers of ripe elder-berries; by
emptying the ink bottle on his chair, when he appeared
in white trowsers, and strewing it with pin

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

caltrops when in brown; and by sundry other innocent
tricks, wherewith tender juvenals delight to
show their affection. These little freedoms, it is
true, sometimes drove him into a passion, when he
scolded at us with great energy and emphasis; but
they gave him no disgust to the school, in which he
might have perhaps remained the president to this
day, had it not been for a discovery made by some
busy bodies, which brought his administration to a
close, after six months' sway, and wrought somewhat
of a change in public opinion on the subject of the
new system.

The discovery was, that, under the said system,
learning was at a stand-still, the boys having actually
advanced in nothing but mischief during all that
period. The system was again brought under discussion;
the minority who had originally opposed
it, repeated their denunciations; and, after another
squabble, which, this time, bade fair to shake even
the National Government, (so hot, furious, political
and patriotic were the passions it excited,) our enemies
prevailed, and schoolboy rights and schoolboy
glory fell for ever.

It was now urged, that the best way to bring up
the boys of a republic in detestation of tyrants, was
to put tyrants over them during their school days,
and thwack them into a thorough appreciation of
the horrors and inconveniences of oppression. In
short, it was agreed that the Ancien Régime should
be restored, and the birch used as before; or, at
least, so far as was necessary to help us along with
our books, and keep us on our best behaviour.

In coming to this resolution, our enemies (for so
we now considered the trustees, and all who took
part with them,) forgot the lessons of history and
experience; which teach, that, however easy it may

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

be to enslave a people who have enjoyed freedom so
long as to be tired of it, it is by no means easy to
subjugate those who have just come to a taste of it.
Had they pondered this truth a little, they would
have saved themselves a good deal of surprise at
what befell, upon the third day of the reign of the
new master they had appointed to rule over us;
when that indiscreet personage, having flourished
his rod for the first time, was valiantly set upon by
General Dare and the rest, and ejected from the
premises, after having suffered a castigation ten times
more severe and wholesome than any he could have
ever designed to inflict.

Another teacher was obtained, and with a like result;
and then another, whose reign was as briefly
and ingloriously brought to an end; by which time,
the trustees, who were now unanimously of opinion,
that the democratic system had ruined us, and were
resolved to leave no means untried to flog us into
submission, began to perceive a difficulty in obtaining
masters—those whom we had driven from the
chair having united in representing us as such a set
of bloody-minded young desperadoes, nay, of incarnate
imps, that others of the race were filled with
terror, and declined having any thing to do with the
school; and, in fact, there was an inter-regnum of
two months, during which we happy republicans enjoyed
a famous holiday.

p019-064 CHAPTER VII. A conspiracy against the liberties of the infant republic; and President M'Goggin is elected to rule over it.

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

At the end of this space, the trustees succeeded in
engaging the services of a personage, who, I verily
believe, was procured for the sole purpose of testing
the efficacy of the brutum fulmen, of subjugating
us by main force; for he was an illiterate vulgar dolt,
an Irishman just caught, who professed, as he said
himself, to teach nothing but “r'ading, writing,
'rithmetic, and dacent manners;” although, in other
respects, the very man the trustees wanted. His
name was M'Goggin. He was six-feet high, and
limbed and shouldered like a Hercules; and, indeed,
of such strength and activity, that, had he been set at
the business for which he was best qualified—that is,
canal-digging—I have no doubt he would have cut
through the Isthmus of Panama in a month, without
any assistance. He had an ugly look, too, about the
eyes, which, besides being of the colour of a cat's,
were overshadowed by a pair of brows of such a bigness
and appearance that they looked like two stuffed
rat-skins stuck on with glue; and his complexion
was of the hue of sole-leather, plentifully besprinkled
with freckles of the size of half-dimes. To add to
his demerits, he was entirely incapable of fear, and
had such a natural love of a row, that, when informed

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

by the trustees of our character and doings, and the
probability, or indeed, certainty of his soon being
embroiled with us, he rubbed his hands with satisfaction,
and declared we were “swate little divils,”
and that “we should get along very well together.”

I remember very well the impression which the
first view of this destined enslaver produced upon
the scholars; and it was none the weaker for some
hints of his qualities which had begun to circulate
among us. We were assembled at the Academy door,
comparing accounts, when the new President was
pointed out by one who had seen him before, crossing
the street to a turnstile, which led into the
schoolhouse green, through a fence full five feet high.
We all pronounced him a giant, and some one said
he looked as if he could “walk over the fence like
nothing;” a declaration, which, though made in jest,
was justified by the event; for the gentleman, neglecting
the stile, either because he did not see it, or
scorned to pass by a mode so humble and commonplace,
suddenly leaped into the air and over the
fence, without so much as laying his hands upon it;
which, indeed, he could not do, both hands being
occupied by two mysterious-looking bundles, the
nature of which, at that distance, we could not make
out. The facility with which he performed this
wondrous feat, as if it were a matter of every day's
occurrence, and the appearance he had in the air so
like a fiery dragon or a flying dromedary, struck a
kind of terror into the youthful republicans, who
looked upon one another with blank visages; and
then, as Mr. M'Goggin drew nigh, slunk away silently
into the school, and betook them to their
seats.

In a moment more, M'Goggin entered; and we
then saw that the two bundles he carried were

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

composed of goodly birchen twigs, there being at least
a groce of them altogether; and this sight, it may be
supposed, did not banish the chill of our first impressions.
These odious emblems of rule, carried on
his shoulders like the fasces of a Roman lictor, he
bore to the master's desk, situated on a platform;
which having ascended, he turned upon us the light
of his countenance, and roared, (for his voice was
like the bellow of a bull,) in tones that made the
glasses rattle, and, I might almost add, some of our
bones into the bargain—“Good morrow till ye, ye
spalpeens! I'm your masther and t'acher—Get up
and make me a bow, to show your good manners.”

Now whether it was that there was electricity in
his tones, or that we were all willing to prove we
were well bred young gentlemen, it is very certain
that every soul in school, at these words, bounced
up and fell to scraping and ducking with the utmost
civility; which being done, the invader, dropping
down upon his chair, roared out again, before we
could follow his example and resume our seats, which
we were about to do—“Stand at aise!—as ye are,
ye rapperees, 'till I lay down the law till ye!”

In this, also, he was obeyed; though I cannot say
any of us actually stood at our ease, but, on the contrary,
we remained casting wild and anxious glances
one upon another, as if doubting whether we had
not of a sudden got some dangerous nondescript animal,
instead of a new preceptor, among us. But the
gentleman gave us no time for pondering. “Now,
ye blackguards!” he cried, “listen to my spache, and
remimber it every letther; and him that doesn't,
belave me, I'll have the skin of him. D'ye hear,
ye vagebones! Now, thin, I'm tould ye're an iligant
set of divil's imps, one an' all, that knows
nayther manners, nor obadience, nor dacency of

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

behaviour; but, arrah, ye divils, look me in the face,
till I tell ye what I am of meself, that is the Masther
over ye!”

Every eye was at once obediently turned upon the
gentleman, who with furious voice, and hideous contortions
of countenance, like a bulldog taking physic,
continued:

“Be the powers, I'm nothing at all at all, only
jist the gentleman that will bate the wickedness out
of ye! D'ye hear that, ye rapscallions?”

And with that, Mr. M'Goggin, whose ire seemed
to rise at the sound of his own voice, jumped up
again; and flourishing his birches, a whole bundle
at at ime, again burst forth: “D'ye want to be licked,
ye divils? I'm tould, ye're grand fighting ganiuses.
But d'ye want it? Does any of ye want it? If so,
spake; spake up like big little fellows, any of ye;
for, be me sowl, I'm itching to begin wid ye!”

This harangue, or rather defiance, for it was nothing
less, the horrid fellow concluded by marching
round the room, and prying into every countenance,
as if for the purpose of finding some one disposed to
try conclusions with him; and it is wonderful with
what pacific modesty every eye was cast to the floor,
the moment Mr. M'Goggin stood before its possessor.
Even General Dicky Dare, who we thought could
face Old Nick himself, was observed to become so
studious and intent upon a sum he was working on
his slate, as the gorgon passed, as to be quite unable
to lift his eyes up to it. In short, we were all very
peaceably inclined that morning, and stood the challenge
with patience—because, as we agreed, as soon
as we got out of school, Mr. M'Goggin was a stranger,
and it was not worth while to quarrel with
him at the first introduction. Besides, as we also

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

concluded, it would be just as well to wait a while,
to know what sort of a person he was.

In this particular, Mr. M'Goggin did all he could
to gratify us, by laying open his characteristics as fast
as possible. I should rather say, his characteristic,
for he had but one; and that was a raging desire to
get an opportunity to trounce some of us. He sat upon
the watch all day long, birch in hand, threatening,
fifty times an hour, if a boy did but look up, or
scratch his head, or drop a book, or stir on his seat,
or do, in fact, any thing at all, to “bate” him, if he
did that again; and as we were all too intent upon
the study of his characteristics, as above, to think
of giving him such an opportunity of quarrelling with
us, it so happened that, for five whole days, to the
infinite astonishment of the whole town, we were
the best behaved boys that were ever seen in a
school-room.

p019-069 CHAPTER VIII. President M'Goggin converts his government into a despotism: the patriots rise in insurrection, and strike a terrible blow for freedom: the effects of the great battle between the oppressor and the oppressed.

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

On the sixth day, the usurper waxing weary of
his close application, and deeming his power perfectly
established, began to relax somewhat in his
vigilance; and in the afternoon took occasion to pay
a visit to a house across the way, that he had hired
for the reception of his family, which, with the assistance
of an old negress whom he had taken into
his service, he was now fitting up for his residence.
We took advantage of his absence to relax a little
ourselves, being as tired as he of the stupidity of the
five former days; and not knowing in what better
way to amuse ourselves, we got up a little fight between
two of the juniors; and this gradually setting
some half dozen others by the ears, there presently
arose a prodigious uproar, which reached the auditories
of M'Goggin, and brought him immediately
back. As we had warning of his return, the fray
was over, and we were all at our seats, diligently
poring over books and slates, before he entered;
which he did with thundering step, bellowing, as
he snatched up a bundle of his birches—“Who's
been fighting? Tell me, ye villains, and I'll give

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

it till 'em!”—a question which, being addressed to
the whole school, no one felt himself called on to
answer.

Seeing this, and having repeated the question a
second time without effect, M'Goggin strode to
the door, locked it, and deposited the key in his
pocket; and we were thus shut up with the tiger,
with no possibility of escape; a horrid situation;
but its very desperateness began to infuse a kind of
courage into the breasts of many of us. Then stepping
back to his platform, he cried out again, with
a most ferocious look—“Arrah, ye little divils,
ye don't think I'm now going to tache you a
lesson! Look upon me face! I intind to ask
you the question one afther another; and him that
doesn't answer, be the powers, I'll have the sowl of
of him! And, be me faith, I'll begin wid the biggest
of ye.”

And with that, he stepped up to Dicky Dare,
(who, being now driven to the wall, exchanged
glances with me, full of martial meaning and resolution,)
and demanded—“Who's been fighting, ye
spalpeen.”

“Why, really,” responded Dicky, modestly, (but
I observed he stole his fingers towards an inkstand;
and I did the same, besides winking invitingly to
others to make ready,) “I have been so busy with
this here problem, I can't pretend to say any thing
about it.”

“Ye lie, ye vagabone!” cried the tyrant; an expression
that the insulted general immediately retorted
by calling him an “Irish blackguard,” and
throwing the contents of the inkstand into his face;
while, at the same moment, down came, like the
tail of a comet, whisking a world out of its sphere,
the whole bundle of switches upon Dicky's head,

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

whereby, as he afterwards said, he got six dozen
stripes all in one. “Hurrah for freedom and schoolboys'
rights!” roared Dicky, making the inkstand
follow the ink. “Come up to the scratch, boys,
and we'll trounce the black-faced beggar in no
time;”—a call that was responded to by some
twenty or thirty of us, who felt that the case was
desperate, and that we must fight now or yield forever.
But more than half our republicans, I am ashamed
to say, were under such terror of the oppressor's
looks, that they sat still, giving us no assistance
whatever.

And now came the tug of war—the crashing of
the bundled birches on heads and shoulders, the
rattling of inkstands against breast, wall and window—
the shout, the cry, the rush, the scuffle, the
squeak and groan, the thump, the kick, the slip,
the tumble, the sound of rending garments—for it
was a Kilkenny business, and coats and jackets
went to pieces, if they did not utterly vanish in
dust and smoke. Never did twenty patriots rush to
the attack of their country's foe with nobler intrepidity
than we; never did twenty bulldogs more
valiantly leap upon the throat and back of armed
rhinoceros or Hyrcan tiger. In short, we did wonders,
but the greatest wonder of all was, that we did
wonders in vain; for, in five minutes space, there
was not a soul of us that was not put hors de combat.
Valour, patriotism, the love of liberty and
glory, could do nothing against a foe like Mr.
M'Goggin; who, having snatched up General Dare,
as General Dare would have snatched up a kitten,
and slung him round by the leg, in a circle, as a
slinger whirls his sling, whereby myself and seven
others were laid flat, and Dicky, who unfortunately
slipped through his fingers, lodged on the top of a

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

bookcase that contained the school library—caught
up another combatant, whom he hurled like a cannon
ball at the heads of the rest, disabling four, as well
as his missile, and ended by demolishing the others
in the usual Irish way, that is, by knocking them
down with his fists.

This ending, however, was, with him, only the
beginning; for, having now rendered the whole of
us conformable, he recurred to his birches, and
flogged us—alas, no longer resisting! in a manner
that is quite indescribable. In short, he entirely
used up his bundle of six dozen upon us; and this
being done, he appropriated the remaining fascis to
the others, the non-combatant members of the confederacy,
whom he trounced with great regularity
and impartiality, one after the other, till he had gone
over the whole school. In half an hour, we were a
vanquished people—all vanquished, all subdued—
dreaming no longer of our rights, but of our backs—
crest-fallen, heart-fallen, chop-fallen, without the
courage left us even to indulge the hope of vengeance.

But vengeance was, nevertheless, in store.

p019-073 CHAPTER IX. Robin escapes from slavery, and begins to be a young person of promise.

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

At the time of M'Goggin's appearance and usurpation,
I was, or (for the matter was by no means
certain) was supposed to be very nearly seventeen
years old; an age at which the reader may be surprised
at finding me still a schoolboy.

To explain this circumstance, I may observe,
first, that boys in my day, and in that country, were
not supposed to reach the years of discretion so
soon as they do now; it being no uncommon thing
to see gawky fellows of eighteen or nineteen, with
mown chins and bass voices, sitting at the desk in
school, as simple as their neighbours, or playing
shinney on the green with all the zeal and abandon
of boyhood. This undoubtedly arose, in a great
measure, from the defective system and means of
education; but in part also, from the negligent way
in which boys were brought up by their parents;
who, having their heads full of their own business,
were usually glad to delegate all charge of them,
with all the trouble, to ill-rewarded and incompetent
schoolmasters.

When boys were intended for college, greater
pains were indeed taken to find them good teachers,
who inspired them with early manliness; but in the

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

common schools, where the majority of lads were
to finish their education, the masters being such
ignoramuses as I have described, they were commonly
left to themselves, and remained, to all purposes,
boys, until their education, or rather the
period assigned to it, was completed; when, being
taken away from school, they immediately became
men; the change being effected, like that from day
to night in tropical regions, without any twilight, or
gradual merging of the one into the other. The
manner of the transformation was as ridiculous as
its instantaneousness was striking. A neckcloth and a
pair of high heeled boots were put on; and then the
wearer suddenly amazed his friends by beginning to
talk grammar—that is, by saying, for “them fellers”
“those felloes,” for “me and him,” “he and I,” &c.—
using big words, and trouncing all the boys, his
associates of the day before, who accosted him with
the old familiar nickname of friendship, instead of
saluting him by the honourable title of Mister.

There was the additional reason for my remaining
so long a schoolboy, that I was more than twelve
years old before I began my education, and was, at
that period, as I have mentioned, several years
behind my age, as it respected the growth of both
mind and body. It is true, that, having once taken
a start, I was soon on a par, as to intelligence, with
other boys of my age, and, in some respects, even
advanced beyond them; but I was certainly, like
the rest, a mere boy, so long as I remained at school—
and, indeed, as the reader may perhaps think, for
a good while afterwards.

From what I have said of the anxiety of parents
to escape the charge and trouble of their children, it
will not seem very surprising that little was done on
their part, to abate or punish the excesses into which

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

we were driven by the belligerent and democratic
spirit prevailing amongst us. There was, undoubtedly,
great commotion among them at every new
flogging and expulsion of the master they had set
over us; at such times they scolded us with great
energy, expatiated upon the enormity of the offence,
and even threatened us with the terrors of private
castigation;—nay, sometimes, even vowed they
would give us up to the civil authorities, to be
punished for riot and assault and battery. As for
expelling us the school, that was never talked of, for
the excellent reason that, as every one of us hated
school more than any thing else in the world, so expulsion
would have been esteemed the greatest
favour they could have bestowed on us. It is very
certain that, whatever they did to bring us back to
reason, they failed to effect their purpose.

In my own case, I must confess, that the share I
had in all these excesses was very disagreeable to
my good patron; who, although immersed in the
cares of his laborious and harassing profession, was
yet at pains to watch over me as much as he could,
to admonish me of the folly and wickedness (for so
he called it,) of my behaviour, and, pointing out the
peculiar impropriety and heinousness of it in my
case, to exhort me to such modesty of deportment
and devotion to my studies as my peculiar situation
made the more imperatively necessary. Such discourses
had their effect only for a time; for, whatever
were the virtuous resolutions I framed, and the promises
I made him, I was sure, so easily was I led
away by the example and incitements of my school-mates,
to be as bad, in a week or two, as ever.

This incorrigibleness, and the disappointment of the
hopes he had once indulged of my growing up worthy
of his care and affection, his disgust of my

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

boisterous conduct, and indignation at my folly, gradually
undermined me in his regards; and the alienation
was the more rapid, as well as excusable, because
he had now an object upon whom nature
impelled him to lavish all his richest affections.

His little daughter of whom I have spoken—her
name was Nanna, derived, I believe, from some
Swedish ancestress on the maternal side—as one
whom, from her infirm constitution, every body
almost daily expected to see fall into the tomb,
began, about the period of her mother's death, to
exhibit symptoms of returning health; which being
taken immediate advantage of by her skilful parent,
she was in a few months, to his own inexpressible
joy and the amazement of every one else, restored
to complete health. The development of her faculties,
her rapid advance in beauty, grace, sweetness of
disposition—in every thing that could warm the
heart, and inflame the pride, of a doting father, were
indeed surprising; and at the time of which I speak—
that is when I reached what was supposed to be
the verge of my eighteenth year—she was a creature,
being then nearly fifteen years old, whom no one
could look upon without interest and admiration.
She was the loveliest of creatures; and I, who had,
from habit, grown to regard her as, and to call her,
a sister, was as proud of her beauty as was my patron,
her father himself. It was not, therefore,
unnatural, having such a being, his own offspring,
to love, that he should love me less; and whatever
pain I felt at the change in his affections—for, boy
as I was, I perceived there was a change—I ceased
to regret it, when I thought that he had taken from
me, only to bestow on Nanna. However, I do not
intend to be sentimental.

It could not be otherwise than that such a being,

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

with whom my daily and hourly intercourse was
that of a brother, should, sooner or later, exercise a
strong and happy influence, even without knowing
it herself, over both my manners and my feelings;
and it is to the commencement of that influence, more
than to the remonstrances of my patron, that I date
the first improvement in both. So true it is, that
the silent, and even unsuspected, influence of woman
sways the heart more strongly to virtue and manliness
than the wisest admonitions of sages.

I felt this influence for the first time, when rushing
into the before mentioned battle with President
M'Goggin; which, indeed, I entered into with no
small degree of reluctance; though as M'Goggin was
such a champion as I had never before broken lance
with, I cannot, for the life of me, say whether there
was not quite as much deterring influence of another
kind—videlicet, a fear of the consequences. But
that battle over, I am very certain, I began to experience
the unmixed influence of Nanna in the
feelings that followed; for I was ashamed of myself
for having got such a flogging; whereas I never remember
to have experienced any shame after a flogging
before, the whole gist of the grief, in such
cases, lying only in the pain of the blows.

And I felt that influence still more strongly in a
desire that immediately seized me to leave the school;
and that, not merely for the purpose of escaping
similar humiliations fur the future, of which, I confess,
I had no little dread, but that I might begin
a course of reform and amendment in my life and
manners, which, I had a vague notion, I could not
so easily do, while remaining a boy at school. In
this feeling, I took advantage of a lecture my patron
gave me on the subject of this last and greatest, the
M'Goggin battle, to assure him I was sorry for my

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

ill deeds, and desirous to live a new life more in consonance
with his wishes; and in fine, begged him, as
that was a necessary preliminary, to take me from
M'Goggin's hands and from school.

To this he consented; and then, having endeavoured
to impress upon my mind a sense of my
peculiar situation, as one which, (putting his own
kindness, and the dependence I might place on it,
out of the question,) should make a youth of spirit
eager to embrace every means of securing his own
independence; and assuring me that he did this, not
by way of hinting an intention of withdrawing his
protection, which he should continue to me, until my
own misconduct rendered it impossible, which he
hoped, notwithstanding all that had passed, should
never be the case: having done this, I say, he offered
to my choice either to go to college, (after having
spent one year in careful preparation at some distant
and secluded school;) which having passed through,
he would then advise with me as to my future course;
or to enter his office, and there, while striving as far
as possible by my own diligent efforts, to repair some
of the deficiencies of my education, to be instructed
by him, by and by, in his own profession, and thus
be prepared for future usefulness in the world.
Either of these plans, he said, I was free to adopt;
and, in either, he would give me all the assistance I
could expect from a parent; but, whichever might
be my choice, he would expect of me a promise of
such diligence and good conduct as it was both a
parent's right and duty to expect.

My first inclinations were very clearly in favour
of the first named proposal; for I thought from
what I had often heard, there must be grand fun at
a college; and, in fact, in the midst of all the solemn
admonitions, and exhortations upon the necessity of

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

soberness and diligence which my benefactor was
giving me, my imagination was most easily seduced
by the ideas of sport and frolic. To the college,
therefore, I felt strongly inclined; and I was about
to say so, when (and I know not why such a consideration
should enter my brain) I was struck with
the thought that Nanna would not be there; and as
it was but a step in the process of association to
remember that Nanna would be where I was, I
immediately resolved upon the latter proposal; at
which, I thought, the good doctor looked a little
gratified. I promised all he wished as to diligence,
good behaviour, &c.; and should have promised the
contrary, or any thing else, just as easily. In fact,
I was not at all accustomed to trouble myself with
doing things upon reflection, in those days.

The school was left, and in two or three days,
I turned man; that is, I put on the boots and neckcloth
as aforesaid; astonished the grammar and the
dictionary, as well as the neighbours, with the elegance
of my phraseology; and should have been
happy to comply with the last requisite of transformation,
and trounce all my schoolmates for calling
me Sy Tough, instead of Mr. Robin Day, had I not
been afraid—not of angering my patron, for, really,
I forgot him in the premises—but of grieving the
gentle heart of Nanna; who, by some means or
other, became, about this time, inextricably involved
in every net of ratiocination my brain attempted
to weave.

There was but one regret I felt at leaving the
school; which was, that I was in debt to Mr.
M'Goggin for a trouncing, without the means of
making payment; and, indeed, I hated the villain
so heartily for having been the first to make me feel
ashamed of myself, that it was only owing to the

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

secret influence and oft recurring thought of Nanna
that I did not obey the impulse I felt to pelt him
with stones, whenever I chanced to meet him in
the street—especially as the odious wretch never
passed me, without the insulting salutation—“Good
morrow till ye, ye vagabone: ye'll come to the gallows,
ye divil!”

I wish I had not felt so vindictive, as it would
have saved me a deal of trouble; and, in particular,
the trouble of writing my adventures: but it was
fated I should have satisfaction of President M'Goggin
for all his injuries.

p019-081 CHAPTER X. The unconquerable Dare organizes a new conspiracy, and the tyrant is at last stormed in his citadel and overthrown.

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

Having got the mastery of the school, M'Goggin,
the most inveterate of despots, with the consent
and approbation of the trustees and townsfolk, continued
to exercise his authority in a way that was
designed to annihilate every vestige of liberty, and
make the late republicans slaves indeed. From their
own accounts, he flogged every soul at least once a
day, some of them twice or thrice; and as for General
Dicky Dare, whose dulness at learning still kept
him at school, and whom the tyrant chose to consider
the “sowl of every mischief,” he, from his own
representation, got a flogging once an hour.

But Dicky's soul was all of iron; and, like that
noble metal, the more it was hammered the harder
it grew. Besides, the country was now at war with
Great Britain; and the accounts continually coming
to his ears of battles lost and won, of deeds of valour
by sea and land, on the yawning billow and in the
imminent deadly breach, had kindled his martial
spark anew; and, notwithstanding his daily drubbings,
he was more of a soldier than ever, full of
plots, and stratagems, and treasons. He bore his own
pangs with heroic patience, being engaged, all the
while, meditating a capable and wide revenge; and the

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

pangs of his schoolmates he beheld even with satisfaction;
for, as he said to me, his friend and confidant,
like a statesman and patriot,—“Though they are a
pack of cowards, you can even thump cowards into
bravery, by Julius Cæsar; and by and by, Bully
M'Goggin,” (which was his honourable title in private,)
“will trounce them up to the sticking point.”

In this, General Dare prophesied aright; for in
six months' time, M'Goggin's cruelty had driven
the boys into such a frenzy of desperation and hatred,
that there was not one of them who would not
have murdered him in cold blood—provided any
one should have shown them how, and made them,
as they called it, free of the hangman. This pitch
of fury was what General Dicky meant by his elegant
expression, “the sticking point;” and the moment
they reached it, he invited them, now ready
for any extremity, to join him in the execution of a
plan of revenge he had long digested, and which
may be considered a monument at once of his genius
and his wrath. And in this great design, for my
sins, Dicky invited me to join him, drawing, in
such agreeable colours—alas, I had drawn it a thousand
times before—such a ravishing picture of the
bliss I must enjoy in paying M'Goggin all his dues,
that even Nanna's image, though it fluttered through
my head as often and as sweetly as ever, could not
entirely banish it from my thoughts. Nevertheless,
I had the grace of refuse assisting in the scheme, and
to repeat the refusal over and over again, until the
moment for executing it had come; and then —
But after all, I went only to enjoy the scene as a
spectator: which is, however, the way in which many
other persons go into a squabble.

The day which was to witness this grand proof of
a school's revenge, and of Dicky Dare's genius and

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

resolution, was at the close of April; and the year,
1813; a period rendered the more auspicious to the
design by the ferment into which the people of the
Middle States were thrown by the visitations of
sundry British fleets to their waters; Admiral Cockburn
being at that moment employed with all his
forces in the Chesapeake, robbing farmers' henroosts,
and Admiral Beresford attempting the same
thing, though with no great luck, at the mouth of
the Delaware. The news of these gallant forays had
just reached our town, which was kept in a furious
commotion by the passage through it of sailors and
soldiers on their way to the scene of action; and still
more by the patriotic efforts of its citizens, who,
having no better way to show their zeal, mustered
three or four companies of volunteers, who killed
the British without stirring from home, and kept the
town in a terrible tumult, day and night—but particularly
at night—by firing off cannons, and sometimes
their heads and arms; while the juniors and
rabblement at large imitated them, as far as they
could, by burning tar-barrels, firing fifty-sixes—that
is, not fifty six-pound cannons, but fifty-six pound
weights—well rammed with gunpowder, and blowing
their eyes out with squibs and popguns. Nothing
could be more favourable to the scheme of revenge
than the nightly recurrence of these disorders; and
this the great contriver and conspirator, Dicky,
knew full well. And, fortunately, the hubbub on
the night in question was even greater than usual.

M'Goggin's house, which, I mentioned, was near
the Academy, was in a sequestered part of the town,
there being but few other dwellings, and those of
the meanest order, near. It was built on a large lot,
in which M'Goggin had established a kitchen garden,
well stored with potatoes; and there was an

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

attempt at flowers and fruit-trees near the house,
which stood a little back from the street, and was a
small, and very old and ugly cottage-looking building.
Immediately before the door was a clump of
four Lombardy poplars, ancient and decaying, that
stood, in a square, two on each side of the path, and
had been taken advantage of by some romantic
dweller of former days to construct a kind of rude
alcove, by nailing strips of board on the sides, and
throwing a few beams across, by way of roof; which,
in summer, was usually shaded by vines of gourds
and squashes. At the gate, immediately in advance
of the poplars, was a locust tree. On the right hand
was a cowhouse, and, on the left, a pigpen; and, on
the whole, the cottage was quite romantic enough
looking for Mr M'Goggin.

The happy individuals who, with Mr. M'Goggin,
shared this peaceful abode, were an old negro man,
whom he worked half to death among his potatoes,
and an ill-favoured woman that he called his wife,
but whom every one else considered his slave, as he
was said to be very savage to her, and to make as
great a drudge of her as the negro. Indeed, the boys
had a story that he sometimes beat her; but, though
many believed it, no one knew this for certain. He
had, besides, a great bulldog, which he starved, to
make him ferocious, and therefore the better guard
over his potatoes.

The removal of this dangerous ally of the tyrant
was considered a necessary preliminary to the attack
on the master; and this Dicky effected, the night
preceding the explosion, by training him off with a
piece of meat tied to a string, until he had thrust his
neck into a noose; by means of which he was
dragged to a horse-pond, and there drowned, amid
the rejoicings of the whole band of conspirators.

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

This being done, the youthful general, upon whose
shoulders fell the execution of every task that had the
inconvenience of being attended with danger, climbed
up the locust tree at the gate, and with a saw, cut
out two small notches, which he then plastered over
with clay, to prevent their being seen next day.
The object of this manœuvre, which concluded all
the preparations required, will be presently seen.

It was not till after ten o'clock on the following
night, that the conspirators assembled on the scene of
action, prepared to carry their vengeful plot into full
execution. They came marvellously well provided
with ammunition—that is, with pebbles and brickbats,
and some, I fear, with more dangerous weapons.
The pebbles and brickbats were chiefly in the hands
of the younger boys, whom General Dicky, having
long and laboriously drilled them for the enterprise,
now proceeded to station so as to surround the
house, and particularly to command the front and
back doors. There was a troop of older boys armed
with fireballs (the general called them grenades,)
made of oakum dipped in turpentine, which they
were ready, by means of lighted segars and a little
gunpowder, to kindle at any moment. These the
General called the Invincible Grenadiers, and stationed,
like the others, both in front and on the rear
of the building, but much nearer than the brickbat
guards; and, besides his grenade, each of these desperadoes
had a good stout crabtree, by way of sidearms.

These arrangements having been effected, and all
in deep silence, the General, who had previously
spied a little into the state of the premises, made a
second reconnoissance, prior to entering upon the
last and grandest of his dispositions. And here I
may observe, that all these things were done with

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

but little fear of alarming the enemy; for, besides
the hubbub kept up in the town by the volunteers
and patriotic citizens, there was a gale of wind
blowing, and making a great rustling and howling
among the trees and chimneys. Accordingly, General
Dare had no difficulty in making his way to a
window, and through a cranny spying into the proceedings
within; which proceedings some of us,
who had from curiosity crept nearer to the house,
judged to be uncommonly interesting, as we could
hear an occasional murmur of voices, a mingling, as
it seemed, of growling and lamenting, which we
knew not how to account for. The mystery was
soon unravelled by General Dicky Dare, who crept
back, and declared, to our astonishment and indignation,
that President M'Goggin was beating his
wife—that he had seen him strike her with his
hand—that he was drunk or mad, he knew not
which—and that the poor woman, who was in a
great fright, was crying and begging him not to
abuse her.

This intelligence, as may be supposed, produced a
strong effect upon the feelings of the conspirators,
who were not without generous and chivalrous sentiments;
and they swore, one and all, they would
have satisfaction of the ruffian for his brutality to
the woman, as well as for the injuries he had done
themselves. And this discovery, I may also say,
wrought an immediate change in my own resolutions;
for whereas I had, up to this moment, religiously
persisted in the determination I had made not
to take part in the affray, I was now so operated
upon by indignation at M'Goggin's brutishness,
that I fell to work with zeal, anxious to avenge the
poor woman's wrongs; and was, from that moment

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

to the end, a very prominent ringleader in the whole
row.

The gallant Dare, now doubly excited to diligence,
produced a long rope, having a running
noose at the end. This he threw over the roof of
the arbour, and then laid the noose across the
path, supporting it on little sticks in such a way
that it was impossible any one should pass along the
walk, without striking it with his foot; and the
noose was made so large, that it not only stretched
over the whole path, but would admit a man to pass
through it, standing erect. Near the other extremity
of the rope, was tied by one end a stout bar
of wood, in which was a notch, meant to receive one
end of a second bar that was loose; while its other
end, as well as the end of the bar that was tied, was
designed to be placed each in one of the notches
sawn in the locust tree the preceding evening, at a
height of fifteen or twenty feet from the ground;
the whole forming a kind of trap which would support
a great weight at the end of the rope, until
something should jerk at the noose; in which case
the loose bar that served as a prop, must be dislodged,
the trap sprung, and the weight instantly
fall to the ground, dragging the noose up to the top
of the arbour, and with it Mr. M'Goggin, for whose
sole benefit this beautiful contrivance was invented
by General Dicky.

And supposing we once had the tyrant in the
toils, there was then little fear but that we should be
able to work our will with him at our leisure. The
trap being set, the rope was weighted by some half
a dozen fifty-sixes, which were passed up the tree,
and suspended by Dicky's own hands. We had
previously thrown on the ground, under the noose,
a quantity of straw, sprinkled with turpentine and

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

sawdust, which we designed to fire, the moment our
tiger was caught, and so give him the benefit of a
moderate roasting and smoking, as an introduction
to what was to follow.

It will be perceived that, in laying this ingenious
trap, for M'Goggin, the great contriver did not anticipate
the possibility of any one else falling into it.
There was good reason, indeed, why no one else
should; for the negro being a very cowardly old
fellow, (who would, moreover, in all probability be
sound asleep in his garret,) and Mrs. M'Goggin a
weak, timid woman, it was inferred our assault
would only confine them more closely to the house;
while M'Goggin, being quite fearless, would undoubtedly
make a rush upon us. The result proved
that the calculations even of Dicky Dare might
be defeated, like those of any other great military
genius.

Our arrangements being at length all completed,
the signal for assault was given, and at a period, as
it proved, extremely critical for Mrs. M'Goggin;
for, just as the word was passing round, “All
ready!” we heard her utter a dismal shriek, as if
the ruffian, her lord and master, was again asserting
his supremacy. We uttered three tremendous
cheers; and then, following them up with yells of
“Down with the tyrant! and schoolboys' rights forever!”
let fly a terrible volley of brickbats and
grenades, by which the shutters of the lower windows
and the glasses in the upper ones were dashed
to atoms; and some half dozen of the latter missiles,
the fire-balls, entering the upper rooms, the house
was straightway illuminated, as if on fire, and filled
with smoke.

The effect of this furious cannonade was immediately
made manifest by a medley of cries,

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

ejaculations, and roaring curses from within, the woman
squeaking, the negro yelling, and M'Goggin vociferating
I know not what, but, I believe, maledictions
on the heads of himself, us,—“the divil-born schoolwhelps,”—
and every body else; and the woman, in
an ecstacy of terror, was immediately seen darting
through one of the back windows, which had been
dashed open; whence she fled shrieking away, no
one offering her molestation, but on the contrary,
making passage for her, glad to have her out of the
way. At the same moment, the front door was
opened with a crash, and out came rushing, in his
night-gear, mad with fright—not the autocrat
M'Goggin, as we fondly hoped, but the negro-man;
who running blindly forwards, stumbled against the
noose, and was, in a twinkling, jerked up to the top
of the arbour, where he was seen hanging by one
leg, such an extraordinary picture of amazement
and terror as was never before witnessed, and such
a target for our fire-balls, (for a volley was thrown
before we had time to remark what kind of game
we had caught,) as schoolboys never before enjoyed.

The melo-dramatic character of the spectacle,
was, in the same instant, wonderfully heightened,
and its interest to us increased to the highest pitch,
by an incident that immediately befell; for M'Goggin,
who was close at the negro's heels, armed too,
as we discovered to our horror, with a gun, with
which he rushed forward in the act of firing, having
come within reach of the suspended negro, was
seized upon by this distracted personage, who had
been clawing the air in vain, and now succeeded in
fastening one hand amid the master's locks, while
the other, or the fingers thereof, got by mischance
into his mouth. This accident so discomposed the
nerves of the despot, who, I fancy, must have

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

thought himself pounced upon by some incarnate
devil, darting upon him from the air, that he uttered
a wild howl, dropped his gun, which went off in
falling; and then, forgetting us, fell foul of the
negro, whom he cuffed with maniacal energy, being
himself haled, scratched and hugged by this flying
demon in a style just as eager and extraordinary.

“Bang away!” roared Dicky Dare, firing the
bundle of straw, which instantly burst into flames
and smoke around the two victims, both of whom
were now suspended; for some of the besiegers had
seized upon the rope, and hauled away so furiously,
that, in a trice, M'Goggin lost his footing on the
ground, and was dragged by the inveterate negro
into the air; where they continued to wage a battle
which could only be compared to the aerial fray of
the Genie and the Lady of Beauty, in the Arabian
story; while, all the time, there was such a shower
of fireballs raining against their bodies, and such
volumes of flame and smoke ascending from the
burning straw, as to render the spectacle grand,
ludicrous and horrible altogether; in short, it was
quite indescribable.

And now, while these strange combatants were
pursuing their strange fight, the negro pulling at his
adversary's hair, and yelling with the pain of his
fingers, which M'Goggin was grinding betwixt his
teeth, M'Goggin, on his part, biting and cuffing
and growling, and kicking the air; there arose a cry
that one of the boys was shot, struck by a bullet
from M'Goggin's gun, and that he was dying; intelligence
that afterwards proved to be false, but
which, exasperating feelings that were already rancorous
enough, was followed by furious calls to “Kill
the murdering villain!” and by a rush that many
made upon him with their clubs, with which they

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

furiously beat him; until the rope, frayed and worn
by the rough bark of the locust, suddenly gave
way, bringing him and the negro, with a most terrible
plump, to the ground.

The negro, who fell uppermost, and had, besides,
the good fortune to fall upon his head, which was
not composed of trifling materials, rolled from his
master, and from the embers of the straw, into which
they had fallen together, kicked his leg free from
the noose, and then ran limping off, yelling like a
madman. As for M'Goggin, upon whom we rushed,
now certain of our prey, he lay without motion; and
a bright blaze from the house now falling on his
visage, there was straightway a cry that we had killed
him. “He's done for!” said General Dare, with
much composure, being the only one that was not
horrified at this result of our enterprise—“He's done
for, by Julius Cæsar!—And so is the house too, or
there's no snakes in Virginnie!”

It was even so: the cottage, which we had been,
for the last few moments, too busy to look at, or
think of, we now discovered was on fire, flames
already gushing out of the upper windows, and the
alarm fast passing through the town, and bringing
crowds of people to the scene of our triumph.

“Right about face—cut dirt!” cried General Dare;
and, in a moment, we were scampering from the
field of battle in all directions, terrified at the thought
of what we had done, and still more at the fear of
what might be the consequences.

p019-092 CHAPTER XI. In which Robin Day, flying the terrors of the law, is sent out into the world to seek his fortune.

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

For my own part, I was in such a horror of fright
at the idea of having committed what I now felt was
nothing short of a murder, that I betook myself to
the fields, running as if the hue and cry, the posse
comitatus, constable, hangman and all, were after
me; and it was not until I had plumped over head and
ears into a ditch, whereby the ferment of my mind
was somewhat allayed, that I recovered enough of
my wits to consider what I was about. I then reflected,
that it was by no means certain M'Goggin
was actually dead, although, to be sure, he had looked
marvellously like a subject for the undertaker, his
face being bloody, and of a cadaverous hue. I remembered,
too, that he had fallen from the rope with
sufficient force to stun him for awhile; and moreover,
that the negro-man had tumbled upon him, and so
must have beaten the breath out of his body; and,
hence, it was not improbable, he had been only
in a swoon, from which he might have revived already.
In short, I satisfied myself that I was a great
simpleton for being so much frightened, and that the
wisest thing I could do, would be to creep away
to my comfortable home, without any further thought
of leaving it, until assured I had really got myself
into trouble.

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

Home, accordingly, I went, shivering with wet
and anxiety; and finding the door open, though no
one was stirring, I sneaked away to my chamber,
where I stripped off my wet clothes, and was about
slinking quietly into bed, when the motion was arrested
by the sudden and unexpected entrance of
my patron. His countenance, which was pale and
disordered, filled me with alarm, and this he proceeded
to heighten into the wildest consternation by
exclaiming—“Wretched boy, you have killed a
man! Up and away: you must fly, or be seized,
tried, and perhaps hanged, as a murderer!”

I leaped up, it may be supposed, quickly enough,
and attempted to give utterance to excuses and explanations,
that were none of the calmest or most
coherent; but Dr. Howard checked me: assuring me,
in an agitated and hurried voice, that I had no time
to lose, that he had seen M'Goggin, who was dying
of his injuries—of concussion, or compression, of the
brain, I knew not which—that he had learned I was
one of the ringleaders in the affray, that some of the
citizens had gone for warrants to apprehend me, as
well as others, my companions, that he had left the
dying man, under pretence of getting his trephining
instruments, but in reality to find me, and send me
off, before it was too late; and he ended by mingling
upbraidings of my folly and wickedness, with injunctions
to put on my clothes, and pack up a change
of linen in the saddle-bags, which he had brought
with him into the room, as I must mount horse and
be gone immediately.

I stood aghast; for the sentence of banishment
from his house was more dreadful to my feelings
than my fears had been; and in my confusion, I uttered,
I knew not why, the name of Nanna. He
looked discomposed, the tears came into his eyes,

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

and he exclaimed with mingled grief and bitterness—
“Ah, wretch, you have lost her too: you knew
not what I designed for you!” Then, suddenly
changing to anger, he bade me not name her again;
and calling me madman, murderer, houseburner, and
I knew not what besides, he ended by ordering me
again to dress and be ready; and then left me.

I did as he bade me, slipped on my best coat,
stuffed the saddlebags with clothes, with which his
generosity had always supplied me to even extravagance
and excess; and, though I did all in extreme
agitation of spirits, I had finished before he returned;
which he presently did, bearing a letter and pocket-book,
both of which he put into my hands, saying
that I must proceed to Philadelphia, and deliver the
letter to the gentleman to whom it was directed,
who would assist to put me out of the way of danger,
at least for a time.

“He is my distant kinsman—a merchant—and
has a privateer which he is about sending to sea: he
will give you a berth in her, and you will then be
free to follow your bent, and cut throats to your
liking.”

This he said with such bitterness of sarcasm, that
it overcame my spirits, and I could not avoid shedding
tears; which seemed to soften him, and he then
spoke more gently.

“It is the last life I should have ever desired for
you,” he said, “for it is little better than freebooting—
piracy legalized. But it cannot be helped: the
emergency is too sudden for choice; there is no alternative.
The letter contains money: it will help
to fit you out: Mr. Bloodmoney,” (the merchant to
whom the letter was directed,) “will supply you
what more is needed. The pocket-book will keep
you on the road. You must ride all night: I have

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

ordered you Bay Tom—he will carry you to the
city: but should he fail, leave him on the road, and
hire another. You must be in Philadelphia to-morrow.”

By this time, we could hear a trampling at the
stable, which was not far off; and my patron, saying
all was ready, ordered me to follow him; but
immediately bade me hold, while he ran to his
study, from which he returned with a memorial of
the wreck—the only one he could ever obtain—
which he had lighted on, at his last visit to the
coast, and bought for a trifle of old Mother Moll,
the first of my persecutors. This was a memento
of whose existence I had long been aware, though I
never attached any importance to it, as my patron
was sometimes inclined to do; for, in truth, I cared
nothing for my origin, and was too well content
with the protection, and, as I might have called it,
the parentage of the good doctor, to wish to exchange
it for another's, even a father's. There was,
in fact, in the relic nothing very striking or interesting.
It was a string of beads of different sizes,
of some black wood, I know not what, but they
were polished, and had a fragrant odour; and there
was a central one, in shape somewhat of a cross, of
considerable size, with grotesque carvings, that served
as a sort of locked to connect the two ends of the
string. It was, I always thought, just such a poor
trifling gewgaw as any common woman, a sailor's
wife, might wear; and I was the more impressed
that it had belonged to some such personage, as
there was roughly scratched, as with a jack-knife,
on the back of the locket, the name, as far as we
could make it out, of Sally Ann, which had decidedly
the smack of a tar's delight about it. This, to
be sure, Dr. Howard agreed was likely enough; but

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

the poor sailor's wife might have been my mother
notwithstanding. But what chiefly rendered the
trinket of importance in his regard, was that Don
Pedro, the Spanish negro, our cook, of whom I
have spoken, and who was a mighty good Catholic,
and had an uncommon share of intelligence for his
degree, declared it was nothing less than a Catholic
rosary, as he knew by the number and arrangement
of the beads; and in fact, having put it into his
hands, he began to tell the beads, and, as he did so,
to jabber out a string of Ave-Marias and Pater-Nosters
with great readiness and fluency; only that
he made such a hotch-potch of the matter as neither
himself nor any one else could make sense of.
This, my patron averred, was a curious circumstance;
as a Catholic child in a Yankee schooner (it
seems, Mother Moll had admitted she had taken
the beads from my neck, and Dr. Howard was convinced
the wreck had been a trading vessel from
New England,) was certainly, something out of the
usual course of things; and he therefore resolved to
treasure the beads up, hoping that they might be
the means some day of leading to the most interesting
discoveries.

This string of beads, or rosary, or whatever it
might be, he now put into my hands, bidding me
preserve it with religious care, nay, even to wear it
round my neck, for fear of accidents, as it might
conduct me perhaps to the arms of my parents;
“of whom,” he added, with some emotion, “you
have now greater need than ever, having thrown
away —.” But here he interrupted himself,
and bade me follow him; which I did, until we had
come to the stable; where we found his horse Bay
Tom, an animal that he greatly valued, standing at
the door ready saddled, and with him old Don

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

Pedro himself, who had long professed a great
friendship for me, and from whom, indeed, in the
course of the last five years, I had gradually picked
up some little knowledge of the Spanish tongue,
which afterwards stood me in good stead.

“Mount, and ride for you life,” said my benefactor,
with a stern voice, yet wringing my hands with
painful earnestness; “mount,” he cried; “and heaven
forgive you this fatal deed, and go with you.”

Don Pedro, also, having helped me into the saddle,
gave me a farewell shake, and blubbered, in his
own tongue—“'Adios, mi nino;—adieu, my child;
at last, you are going to the devil:” an assurance
which was by no means so pleasant as it seemed
true.

This done and said, Pedro opened a gate, leading
into the highway, (the doctor's house being seated
on the borders of the town,) that I might ride
through. But I faltered a moment, to look back to
the house, in which, notwithstanding the folly and
violence of my career, I had lived so many happy
hours of my youth. There was a light burning in
Nanna's chamber, who was as yet unacquainted
with the miserable adventures of the night. As I
looked up, the light was suddenly put out; and the
darkness that ensued smote upon my heart as a
mournful omen.

“Why do you pause?” muttered my patron with
impatience. “Begone; your life depends upon your
speed.”

Thus commanded, I turned my horse through the
gate, gave him the rein and spur, and in a moment
was out of the town, flying all the more fleetly for
the din, the cries and shouts that still prevailed; and
which, as the blast brought them to my ears, my
fancy converted into the halloos of vengeful pursuers.