Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/614

596 passion for collecting all sorts of natural objects, crabs, worms, beetles, rats, tadpoles, frogs, snails, leeches, mice, birds, and birds'-nests, which he would bring home, and which were the nuisance and pest of the house. His mother protested and forbade, and threw his "venomous beasts" away, but it was of no use. He was threatened with punishment, and the same night brought in a nest of young rats, when, of course, he was flogged. But blows did no more good than words. When sent to carry his father's breakfast, he cut for the seashore. One morning his mother tied him up firmly to a table to prevent his going out, and set his little sister to watch him. As soon as his mother was absent, with a mixture of promises and threats he made his sister help him, when they pushed the table so close to the grate that he was able to burn off the rope and get away. Tom got at liberty and had a good time that day in the fields. One morning his father hid his clothes, so that when the boy got up he had "nothing to wear." His mother tied a bit of old petticoat around his neck, saying, "I'm sure you'll be a prisoner this day." He tied a string around his middle, hid himself awhile in the entry, and at an opportune moment bolted into the street, and was soon at the shore hunting for crabs, horse-leeches, puddocks, and sticklebacks. But the exposure was too much for him, and he had a long fever, with delirium, hanging between death and life for several weeks. When he recovered, the first thing was to inquire after his beasts. When but four years old he was thrashed and starved and shut up to keep him at home, but he was self-willed, determined, stubborn, and thoroughly incorrigible. He wandered about the beach, rambled over the country, learning all the best nesting-places of the birds—in the woods, plantations, hedges, streams, and mill-dams. He was inquisitive and thoughtful, often asking for information, but rarely getting it. He knew how birds made their nests, and how the flowers grew out of the ground, but he did not know how the rocks grew. He asked his parents, and they told him the rocks had existed from the beginning. This did not satisfy him, so he went to the quarrymen. "How do the rocks grow?" asked he. "Fat say ye?" Tom repeated the question. "To the deil wi' ye, ye impudent brat, or I'll toss ye owre the head o' the quarry!" Once he saw a paper-like something up in a tree, with lots of yellowish bees about it. This started his curiosity, and he tried to get the other boys to join him in securing it. They refused and ran home, leaving him alone. He climbed up near the limb where it was suspended, and was met by a sting which he thought was more painful than any he had ever had before. He sucked and blew the wound, but there hung the wasp's nest, and he could not leave it. It was growing dark, he could not put it in his bonnet nor in his stockings, so he stripped off his shirt, and, though getting numerous stings, wrapped it around the nest, detached it, and carried it home. His father, seeing him shirtless, threatened him with