I was born in the South. I had very bad health
there in my early childhood, and a maiden aunt
took a voyage by sea, from Baltimore to my birth-place,
for the purpose of returning with me to a
climate which the physician had said would
strengthen my constitution.

She brought me up with the greatest kindness,
or rather, I should say, she kept me comparatively
feeble by her over-care of my health. When I was
about fourteen years of age my father brought my
mother and my little sister Virginia from Charleston
to see me. My meeting with my kind mother
I shall never forget. She held me at arm's length
for a instant, to see if she could recognize in the
chubby boy before her, the puny sickly child with
whom she had parted with such fond regret on
board the Caroline but a few years before; and when,
in memory and in heart, she recognized each

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lineament, she clasped me to her bosom with a wild
hysteric joy which compensated her—more than
compensated her—she said, for all the agony
which our separation had caused her. I loved my
mother devotedly, yet I wondered at the emotion
which she exhibited at our meeting; and child
though I was, a sense of unworthiness came over
me, possibly because my affections could not sound
the depths of hers.

My father's recognition was kinder than I had
expected from what I remembered of our separation.
He felt prouder of me than at our parting, I presume
from my improved health and looks; and this
made him feel that being tied to the apron-strings
of my good old aunt, would not improve my manliness.
A gentleman whom he had met at a dinner
party, who was the principal of an academy, a
kind of miniature college, some distance from Baltimore,
had impressed my father, by his disquisitions,
with a profound respect for such a mode of
education.

“William,” said my father, in speaking on the
subject to a friend, “will be better there than here
among the women; he'll be a baby forever here.
No, I must make a man of him. I shall take him
next week with me, and leave him in charge of
Sears.”

My mother insisted upon it that I should stay
longer, that she might enjoy my society, and that

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my sister and myself might become more attached
to each other ere they returned to Carolina. But
my father said, “No, my dear; you know it was
always agreed between us, that you should bring
up Virginia as you pleased, and that I would bring
up William as I pleased.”

“Let us take him, then, back home,” exclaimed
my mother; “he is healthy enough now.”

“But he would not be healthy long there, my
dear. No, I have made inquiry; Mr. Sears is an
admirable man; and under his care, which I am
satisfied will be paternal, William will improve
his mind, and learn to be a man—will you not,
William?”

I could only cling to my mother without reply.

“Here,” exclaimed my father exultingly, “you
see the effect of his education thus far.”

“The effect of his education thus far!” retorted
my aunt, who did not relish my father's remark;
“he has been taught to say his prayers, and to
love his parents, and to tell the truth. You see
the effects in him now,” and she pointed to me,
seated on a stool by my mother.

All this made no impression on my father. He
was resolved that I should go to Bel-Air, the
county town of Harford County, Md., situated
about twenty-four miles from Baltimore, where the
school was, the next week, and he so expressed
himself decidedly.

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The condemned criminal, who counts the hours
that speed to his execution, scarcely feels more
horror at the rush of time than I did. One appalling
now seemed to possess me. I was deeply
sensitive, and the dread of my loneliness away
from all I loved, and the fear of the ridicule and
tyranny of the oldsters, haunted me so that I could
not sleep, and I laid awake all night picturing to
myself what would be the misery of my situation
at Bel-Air. In fact, when the day arrived, I bade
my mother, aunt, and my little sister Virginia farewell,
with scarcely a consciousness, and was placed
in the gig by my father, as the stunned criminal is
assisted into the fatal cart.

This over-sensitiveness—what a curse it is! I
lay no claims to genius, and yet I have often
thought it hard that I should have the quality
which makes the “fatal gift” so dangerous, and
not the gift. My little sister Virginia, who had
been my playmate for weeks, cried bitterly when
I left her. I dwelt upon her swimming eye with
mine, tearless and stony as death. The waters of
bitterness had gathered around my heart, but had
not as yet found an outlet from their icy thrall,
'neath which they flowed dark and deep.

Bel-Air, at the time I write of, was a little village
of some twenty-five or more houses, six of
which were taverns. It was and is a county town,
and court was regularly held there, to which the

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Baltimore lawyers used to flock in crowds; and
many mad pranks have I known them to play there
for their own amusement, if not for the edification
of the pupils of Mr. Sears.

My father drew up at McKenney's tavern, and
as it was about twelve when we arrived, and the
pupils were dismissed to dinner, he sent in his card
to the principal, who in a few minutes made his
appearance. Talk of a lover watching the movements
and having impressed upon his memory the
image of her whom he loveth!—the school-boy
has a much more vivid recollection of his teacher.
Mr. Sears was a tall, stout man, with broad, stooping
shoulders. He carried a large cane, and his
step was as decided as ever was Dr. Busby's, who
would not take off his hat when the King visited
his school, for the reason, as he told his Majesty
afterwards, that if his scholars thought that there
was a greater man in the kingdom than himself,
he never could control them. The face of Mr.
Sears resembled much the likeness of Alexander
Hamilton, though his features were more contracted,
and his forehead had nothing like the
expansion of the great statesman's; yet it projected
similarly at the brows. He welcomed my
father to the village with great courtesy, and me
to his pupilage with greater dignity. He dined
with my father with me by his side, and every now
and then he would pat me on the head and ask me

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a question. I stammered out monosyllabic answers,
when the gentleman would address himself again
to his plate with renewed gusto.

Mr. Sears recommended my father to board me
at the house of a Mr. Hall, who had formerly been
the Sheriff of the county, and whose wife and
daughters, he said, were very fine women. He regretted,
he said, when he first took charge of the
academy, that there was not some general place
attached to it, where the pupils could board in
common; but after-reflection had taught him that
to board them among the towns-people would be as
well. He remarked that I was one of his smallest
pupils, but that he would look upon me in loco parentis,
and doubted not that he could make a man
of me.

After dinner he escorted my father, leading me
by the hand, down to the academy, which was on
the outskirts of the town, at the other end of it
from McKenney's. The buzz, which the usher had
not the power to control in the absence of Mr.
Sears, hushed instantly in his presence, and as he
entered with my father, the pupils all rose, and
remained standing until he ordered them to be
seated. Giving my father a seat, and placing me
in the one which he designed for me in the school,
Mr. Sears called several of his most proficient
scholars in the different classes, from Homer down
to the elements of English, and examined them.

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When a boy blundered, he darted at him a look
which made him shake in his shoes; and when
another boy gave a correct answer and took his
fellow's place, and glanced up for Mr. Sears's smile,
it was a picture which my friend Beard, of Cincinnati,
would delight to draw. The blunderer looked
like one caught in the act of sheep-stealing, while
the successful pupil took his place with an air that
might have marked one of Napoleon's approved
soldiers, when the Emperor had witnessed an act
of daring on his part. As for Mr. Sears, he thought
Napoleon a common creature to himself. To kill
men, he used to say, was much more easy than to
instruct them. He felt himself to be like one of
the philosophers of old in his academy; and he
considered Dr. Parr and Dr. Busby, who boasted
that they had whipped every distinguished man in
the country, much greater than he of Pharsalia, or
he of Austerlitz.

When the rehearsal of several classes had given
my father a due impression of Mr. Sears's great
gifts as an instructor, and of his scholars' proficiency,
he took my father to Mr. Hall's, to introduce
us to my future host.

We found the family seated in the long room in
which their boarders dined. To Mr. Sears they
paid the most profound respect. Well they might,
for without his recommendation they would have
been without boarders. Hall was a tall,

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good-humored, careless man. His wife was older than
himself, tall too, but full of energy. He had two
daughters, Harriet and Jane.

Harriet was a quick, active, lively girl, and
withal pretty; whilst Jane was lolling and lazy
in her motions, and without either good looks or
smartness. The matter of my boarding was soon
arranged, and it had become time for my father to
depart. All this while the variety and excitement
of the scene had somewhat relieved my feelings,
but when my father bade me be a good boy, and
drove off, I felt as if the “last link” was indeed
broken; and though I made every effort, from a
sense of shame, to repress my tears, it was in vain,
and they broke forth the wilder from their previous
restraint. Harriet Hall came up instantly to comfort
me. She took a seat beside me at the open
window at which I was looking out after my father,
and with a sweet voice whose tones I remember yet,
she told me not to grieve because I was away from
my friends; that I should soon see them again,
and that she would think I feared they would not
be kind to me if I showed so much sorrow. This
last remark touched me, and whilst I was drying
my eyes, one of the larger boys, a youth of eighteen
or twenty, came up to the window (for the
academy by this time had been dismissed for the
evening), and said:—

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“Ah, Miss Harriet, is this another baby crying
for home?”

In an instant my eyes were dried. I cast one
glance at the speaker; he was a tall, slim, reckless-looking
fellow, named Prettyman, and from that
day to this I have neither forgotten it, nor I fear,
forgiven him.

In the night, when we retired to our rooms, I
found that my bed was in a room with two others,
Prettyman and a country bumpkin by the name of
Muzzy. As usual on going to bed, I kneeled down
to say my prayers, putting my hands up in the
attitude of supplication. I had scarcely uttered
to myself the first words, “Our Father,” but to
the ear that heareth all things, when Prettyman
exclaimed—

“He's praying! `By the Apostle Paul!' as
Richard the Third says, that's against rules. Suppose
we cob him, Muzzy?”

Muzzy laughed and got into bed; and I am
ashamed to say that I arose with the prayer
dying away from my thoughts, and indignation and
shame usurping them, and sneaked into bed, where
I said my prayers in silence, and wept myself in
silence to sleep. In the morning, with a heavy
heart, and none but the kind Harriet to comfort
me, I betook myself to the academy.

Parents little know what a sensitive child suffers
at a public school. I verily believe that these

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schools engender often more treachery, falsehood,
and cruelty, than exist in West India slavery; I
was about saying even in the brains of an abolitionist.
Most tenderly nurtured under the care of
an affectionate old aunt, who was always fixing my
clothes to keep me warm, coddling up something
nice to pamper me with, watching all my out-goings
and in-comings, and seeing that everything around
me conduced to my convenience and comfort, the
contrast was indeed great when I appeared at the
Bel-Air Academy, one of the smallest boys there,
and subjected to the taunts and buffetings of every
larger boy than myself in the institution. My
father little knew what agony it cost me to be made
a man of.

I am not certain that the good produced by such
academies is equal to their evils. I remember well
for two or three nights after Prettyman laughed at
me, that I crept into bed to say my prayers, and
at last under this ridicule—for he practised his gift
on me every night—I not only neglected to say
them, but began to feel angry toward my aunt that
she had ever taught them to me, as they brought so
much contempt on me. Yet such is the power of conscience,
at that tender age, that when I woke in
the morning of the first night I had not prayed, I
felt myself guilty and unworthy, and went into
the garden and wept aloud tears of sincere contrition.

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Too often, in public schools, the first thing a
youth learns from his elders, is to laugh at parental
authority, and to exhibit to the ridicule of
his fellows the letter of advice which his parent or
guardian feels it his duty to write to him, taking
care, with a jest upon them, to pocket the money
they send, with an air of incipient profligacy,
which any one may see will soon not only be rank
but prurient. Such a moral contagion should be
avoided; and I therefore am inclined to think that
the Catholic mode of tuition, where some one of
the teachers is with the scholars, not only by day
but by night, is preferable. And in fact any one,
who has witnessed the respectful familiarity which
they teach their pupils to feel and exhibit towards
them, and the kindness with which it is met,
cannot but be impressed with the truth of my
remarks.

There were nearly one hundred pupils at Bel-Air,
at the period of which I write, and the only
assistant Mr. Sears had, was a gaunt fellow named
Dogberry. Like his illustrious namesake in Shakspeare,
from whom I believe he was a legitimate
descendant, he might truly have been “written
down an ass.”

The boys invented all sorts of annoyances to
torture Dogberry withal. A favorite one was,
when Mr. Sears was in the city, which was at
periods not unfrequent, for them to assemble in the

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school before Dogberry came, and, setting one by
the door to give notice when the usher was within
a few feet of it, to begin as soon as he appeared
in sight, to shout as with one voice—first “Dog,”
and then, after a pause, by way of chorus,
“berry.”

As soon as notice was given by the watcher, he
leaped to his seat, and every tongue was silent,
and every eye upon the book before it.

The rage of Dogberry knew no bounds on these
occasions. He did not like to tell the principal;
for the circumstance would have proved not only
his want of authority over the boys, but the contempt
in which they held him.

A trick which Prettyman played him, nearly
caused his death, and, luckily for the delinquent,
he was never discovered. Dogberry was very penurious;
he saved two-thirds of his salary, and as it
was not large, he had of course to live humbly.

He dined at Hall's and took breakfast and supper
in his lodgings, if he ever took them, and
the quantity of dinner of which he made himself
the receptacle caused it to be doubted. His lodgings
were the dormant story of a log-cabin, to
which he had entrance by a rough flight of stairs
without the house and against its side. Under the
stairs was a large mud-hole, and Prettyman contrived
one gusty night to pull them down, with the
intention of calling the usher, in the tone of Mr.

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Sears (for he was a good mimic), and causing him
to fall in the mud. Unluckily, the usher heard the
racket without, and not dreaming it was the fall
of the stairs, he leaped from his bed, and hurried
out to see what caused it. He fell on them; and
though no bones were broken, he was laid up for
several weeks. The wind always had the credit of
this affair, and Prettyman won great applause for
his speedy assistance and sympathy with Dogberry,
whom he visited constantly during his confinement.

The night of the adjournment of court, the
lawyers, and even the judges, had what they called
a regular frolic. Mr. Sears was in Baltimore, and
the scholars were easily induced to join in it—in
fact, they wanted no inducement. About twelve
o'clock at night, we were aroused from our beds by
a most awful yelling for the ex-sheriff. “Hall!
Hall!” was the cry. Soon the door was opened,
and the trampling of feet was heard; in a minute
the frolickers ascended the stairs, and one of the
judges, with a blanket wrapped around him like
an Indian, with his face painted, and a red handkerchief
tied round his head, and with red slippers
on, entered our room, with a candle in one hand
and a bottle in the other; and, after making us
drink all round, bade us get up. We were nothing
loath. On descending into the dining-room, lo!
there were the whole bar dressed off in the most

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fantastic style, and some of them scarcely dressed
at all. They were mad with fun and wine. The
ex-sheriff brought forth his liquors, and was placed
on his own table a culprit, and tried and found
guilty of not having been, as in duty bound, one
of the originators of the frolic. He was, therefore,
fined glasses round for the company, and ordered
by the judges to pay it at Richardson's bar. To
Richardson's the order was given to repair. Accordingly,
they formed a line without, Indian-file.
Two large black women carried a light in each
hand beside the first judge, and two smaller black
women carried a light in their right hands beside
the next one. The lawyers followed, each with a
light in his hand; and the procession closed with
the scholars, who each also bore a light. I being
the smallest, brought up the rear. There was
neither man nor boy who was not more or less intoxicated,
and the wildest pranks were played.

When we reached Dogberry's domicil, one of the
boys proposed to have him out with us. The question
was put by one of the judges, and carried by
unanimous acclamation. It was farther resolved,
that a deputation of three, each bearing a bottle
of different liquor, should be appointed to wait on
him, with the request that he would visit the
Pawnee tribe, from the far West, drink some fire-water
with them, and smoke the pipe of peace.

Prettyman, whose recklessness knew no bounds,

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and who, as I suppose, wished to involve me in difficulty,
moved that the smallest and largest person
in the council be of that deputation. There happened
to be by Dogberry's a quantity of logs, which
had been gathered there for the purpose of building
a log-house. Mr. Patterson (I use here a fictitious
name) was at this time the great lawyer of
Maryland. He was dressed in a splendid Indian
costume, which a western client had given him,
and he had painted himself with care and taste.
He was a fine-looking man, and stretching out his
hand, he exclaimed:—

“Brothers, be seated; but not on the prostrate
forms of the forest, which the ruthless white man
has felled, to make unto himself a habitation. Like
the big warrior, Tecumseh, in a council with the
great white chief, Harrison, we will sit upon the
lap of our mother, the earth; upon her breast will
we sleep; the Pawnee has no roof but the blue
sky, where dwelleth the Great Spirit; and he
looks up to the shining stars, and they look down
upon him; and they count the leaves of the forest,
and know the might of the Pawnees.”

Every one, by this time, had taken a seat upon
the ground, and all were silent. As the lights
flashed over the group, they formed as grotesque a
scene as I have ever witnessed.

“Brothers,” he continued, “those eyes of the
Great Spirit”—pointing upward to the stars—“

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behold the rushing river, and they say to our fathers,
who are in the happy hunting-grounds of the blest,
that, like it, is the might of the Pawnee, when he
rushes to battle. The white men are dogs; their
carcasses drift in the tide; they are cast out on
the shore, and the prairie-wolf fattens on them.

“Brothers! the eyes of the Great Spirit behold
the prairies and the forest, where the breath of the
wintry wind bears the red fire through them;
where the prairie-wolf flies and the fire flies faster.
Brothers, the white man is the prairie-wolf, and
the Pawnee is the fire.

“Brothers! when the forked fire from the right
arm of the Great Spirit smites the mountain's
brow, the eagle soars upward to his home in the
clouds, but the snake crawls over the bare rock in
the blast, and hides in the clefts, and hollows, and
holes. Behold! the forked fire strikes the rock
and scatters it, as the big warrior would throw pebbles
from his hand; and the soaring eagle darts
from the clouds, and the death-rattle of the snake
is heard, and he hisses no more.

“Brothers! the Pawnee is the eagle, the bird of
the Great Spirit; and the white man is the crawling
snake that the Great Spirit hates.

“Brothers! the shining eyes of the Great Spirit
see all these things, and he tells them to our fathers,
who are in the happy hunting-grounds of the
blest; and they say that some day, wrapped in the

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clouds, they will come and see us, for our land is
like theirs.”

This was said with so much eloquence by the
distinguished lawyer, that there was a silence of
nearly a minute when he concluded. In the company
was a lawyer named Short, who, strange to
say, was just six feet three inches and a half high,
and he had a client, which is stranger still, named
Long, who was but five feet high.

“Who has precedence, Judge Williard?” called
out some one in the crowd, breaking in upon the
business of the occasion, as upon such occasions
business always will be broken in upon—“Who
has precedence, Long or Short?”

“Long,” exclaimed the Judge, “of course. It
is a settled rule in law, that you must take as much
land as is called for in the deed; therefore, Long
takes precedence of Short. Maybe, Short has a
remedy in equity; but this court has nothing to do
with that; so you have the long and the short of
the matter.”

“Judge,” cried out the ex-sheriff, “we must go
to Richardson's; you know it is my treat.”

“The Pawnee, the eagle of his race,” exclaimed
Patterson; “the prophet of his tribe; he who is
more than warrior; whose tongue is clothed with
the Great Spirit's thunder; who can speak with
the eloquence of the spring air when it whispers
among the leaves, and makes the flowers open and

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give forth their sweets; he, the Charming Serpent,
that hath a tongue forked with persuasion; he,
even he, will go in unto the white man, and invite
him to come forth and taste the fire-water, and
smoke the pipe of peace with the Pawnee. Then,
if he come not forth when the Charming Serpent
takes him by the hand and bids him, the Pawnees
shall smoke him out like a fox, and his blazing
habitation shall make night pale; and there shall
be no resting-place for his foot; and children and
squaws shall whip him into the forest, and set dogs
upon his trail; and he shall be hunted from hill to
hill, from river to river, from prairie to prairie,
from forest to forest, till, like the frightened deer,
he rushes panting into the great lakes, and the
waters rise over him, and cover him from the Pawnee's
scorn.”

This was received with acclamation. Mr. Patterson
played the Indian so well, that he drew me
one of the closest to him in the charmed circle
that surrounded him. His eye flashed, his lips
quivered with fiery ardor, though but in a mimic
scene. He would have made a great actor. I was
so lost in admiration of him, that I placed myself
beside him without knowing it. He saw the effect
he had produced upon me, and was evidently
gratified. Taking me by the hand, he said:—

“Warriors and braves, give unto me the brand,
that the Charming Serpent may light the steps of

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the boy to the hiding-place of the pale-face. He
shall listen to the eloquence of the Charming Serpent
when he takes the white man by the hand—
he shall learn to move alike the heart of the pale-face
and the red man.”

“Brothers: the Charming Serpent to-night,”
said he, handing me the candle, and placing himself
in an oratorical attitude, while every man lifted
his candle so that it shone full upon him—
“Brothers, the Charming Serpent to-night could
speak unto the four winds that are now howling in
the desolate Pawnee paths of the wilderness, and
make them sink into a low moan, and sigh themselves
into silence, were he to tell them of the
many of his tribe who are now lying mangled, unburied,
and cold, beneath the shadow of the Rocky
Mountains—victims of the white man's treacherous
cruelty.

“Brothers! O! that the Great Spirit would
give the Charming Serpent his voice of thunder—
then would he stand upon the highest peak of the
Alleghanies, with forked lightning in his red right
hand, and tell a listening and heart-struck world
the wrongs of his race. And when all of every
tribe of every people had come crouching in the
valleys, and had filled up the gorges of the hills,
then would the Charming Serpent hurl vengeance
on the oppressor. But come,” said he, taking the
candle in one hand and myself in the other, “the

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Pawnee talks like a squaw. The Charming Serpent
will speak with the pale-face, and lead him
forth from his wigwam to the great council-fire.”