diseased my imagination, until I was habitually
and completely enthralled by terror.

You see, I was a bad child. I cried. After
commencing life by obstinately breaking the
first nursery commandment, in crying when
told to be good, I grew into a wicked child
by disliking the exemplary and amiable, the
watchful and devoted creatures who scolded
and frightened me. I cannot deny having
slapped the cheek of my ghostly mother when
sweetly told to kiss her before company. It
would be tedious to tell how I was flogged
and physicked, ridiculed and rebuked, to
make me good. Many days of solitary
imprisonment in a cellar, and long weeks of
solitary confinement in a garret, did not cure
the disorders of my imagination. Finally,
the household debarrassed itself of me by
sending me to day-schools.

But I was incurable. At school I found
the alphabet invested with a chevaux-de-frise
of difficulties. The symbols were to me mystic,
enchanted, unconquerable, and horrible. When
I looked at them as they hung against the wall,
they seemed positively terrible. They were
painted in different colours upon bits of pasteboard
about the size of considerable panes of
glass. They were all enchanted. As sure as
death, they were all full of devils. When I
looked at them, they danced zigzag; their
angles went off like forks of lightning, their
bows grew like rainbows, and their colours shot
like the northern lights. How was I to catch
a letter when every one of them could gleam
away like a shooting star, a celestial cricket?
How was I to learn them when they whirled
round in pools of fire mist, with fairies, kelpies,
tigers, dragons, whales, and ghosts?
My schoolmasters having quickly found out
the great doctrine of the nursery, that I was
a bad boy, treated me as an enemy to be subdued
at all hazards. I was their enemy. I
was an obstacle to their success, a slur upon
their repute, an offence to their vanity.
Leather blisters applied on the hands and
on the legs, anywhere, everywhere, were
ineffectual; and, doubtless to their great
astonishment and benevolent disappointment, my
ears were pulled and my head was knocked
about, without the dispersion of my ghostly
phantasmagoria. The bewitched symbols only
scowled the more wildly,— flashing, flitting,
dazzling, grinning, threatening, like the spirit
world of my own midnight couch. With the
best will I could obediently bestow, I never
caught more than occasional glimpses of the
O, and transient catches of the apex of the
A, or of the angles of the Z.

At last a schoolmaster studied me. He was
a young clergyman who had picked up a few
physiological notions during his studies. When
he addressed a question to my class, he fixed
his eyes on me. I remember well, and hope I
shall for ever, how he called me up to his desk
and spoke gently to me. Observing my utter
confusion, he asked my schoolfellows questions
about me, and elicited a general opinion that
I was not right in the head. Almost daily,
whenever he observed wildness in my eyes,
he sent me out to the playground to play
with my marbles and my buttons. After a
time, a mild-mannered boy, a year older than
me, his nephew, joined me in my amusements.
When he had gained my confidence,
I intrusted him with my firm and fierce
conviction that the alphabet was a hideous
collection of spectres invented to torment little
boys. My theory of human nature was a
generalisation of my observations of my
ghostly mother. I had no hallucinations
respecting my marbles and buttons— a fact
which was deemed a conclusive proof of my
perversity. The kindly boy once drew an A
with a bit of stick upon the ground, and
asked me defiantly if I could draw such a
clever figure. I tried and did. He told me
it was an A. I asked him. what is the use
of it? He seemed puzzled to say. Drawing
the letter A was an amusement which we
adopted when tired of buttons and bowls.
My Mentor told me one day, as the most
recent discovery in his science, the use of the
letter A; it was useful in spelling cat— c-a-t.
Nothing daunted, I demanded the use of
spelling cat when we could say it, plump
and full; he triumphantly told me we could
not read about cats in books without spelling
the word. This gentle boy, whose name I
never knew, had a mother who used to stop
me in the street and speak kindly to me. She
was shabbily dressed, and, ever since, I have
felt a grateful gush whenever I have chanced
to meet a similarly-looking and seedily-attired
gentlewoman. Whether it was in
compliance with advice, or because I could play
without costing anything a quarter, I was taken
away from school and told to play near home.

I played near home for several years. As
I grew stronger, the words near home became
elastic, and my range of playground gradually
extended over a couple of parishes, two miles
of sand shore, and as many of rocky coast.
I wandered along the banks of a canal, of
several streams, and two rivers. I explored
woods and climbed hills. As long as I continued
weakly, I found boys generally very
willing to fight me. I preferred solitude to
their society. I was not afraid of plants, and
I became geographically acquainted with
every kind of vegetal production, from the
red seaweeds of low water among the rocks,
to the plants which grow upon the roofs of
ancient churches. I knew where to find
several kinds of stones. All animals frightened
me, except birds. When I first saw a
frog leap, I shrieked deliriously. The truth
is, I had not a particle of physical courage.
Gradually, however, as my health increased,
I conquered every fright, and attacked all
animals, up to dogs and bulls. I learned
courage from stinging insects and pinching
crabs. When I approached work-folks, they
usually asked me surlily why I was not at
school, and I answered, " There is something