Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/126

 us some account of the nature of a thunderstorm, and how after a terrible crash the danger is past; and thus sustained our courage till the clouds cleared away. No other items of general information, except these two, dwell in my memory as having been communicated during the four years of my attendance.

In 1798 or 1799 I was sent to Mr. Swanston's school, to learn writing and arithmetic. In winter I was in his school, and Mr. Fraser's from eight in the morning till 2, without any interval of repose; and in summer from 7 till 4 and often till 6 , with only one hour, from 9 to 10 , for breakfast. Add to this labor lessons to prepare in the evenings, a constant feeling of inanition, especially during winter, cold feet and thin clothing, with no object in the world in my lessons to interest me, and it may well be conceived how the state of sin and misery brought on man by the fall was to me a palpable, undeniable, experienced reality. A few explanations will throw light on the causes of these sufferings. Too much cerebral action, and a close, ill-aired bedroom, with three besides myself in it, made me in the morning low, listless, irritable, and without appetite. My mother had been taught that oatmeal-porridge and buttermilk were the best food for children for breakfast. The buttermilk was bought in large quantities from dairymen's carts in the street. Frequently it was not fresh when bought, and it daily became more acid when kept. To my delicate stomach it often tasted like vinegar, and I revolted at the porridge. In my mother's eyes this was fastidious delicacy of taste, and she ordered the porridge to be kept for my dinner. I received a penny to buy a roll for my mid-day sustenance. At that time the quartern loaf ranged from a shilling to twenty pence in price, and the penny roll was a small morsel for a young, hungry, growing boy. On going out, however, I bought the roll at the first shop—there was one close by my father's gate. I ate it dry, and had no more food till half-past two, when I came home to dinner. My mother was not so severe as she had threatened to be, for she gave me a dinner that I could eat; but she never failed to have the porridge served in the morning. In all this she was actuated by a sense of duty alone, for she was ever aiming at our welfare. Ignorance was the rock on which her kindest endeavors were wrecked, and she was not to be blamed for not knowing what nobody else in her rank, or, so far as I have yet discovered, in any other rank of life, then knew. The cold feet and thin clothing were the consequence of my own self-willed ignorance. She pressed flannel underclothing on me, but because it irritated my excessively sensitive skin I rejected it, and pleaded that it was good for me to learn to be hardy in my youth, to prepare for the trials and exposures of manhood: this was listened to, and the flannel was not forced on me. In the school, and in the West Church especially, in which in those days there were no stoves, I often sat chilled like an icicle, and my only surprise is how I survived so much irrational treatment and stupid conduct.

My constitution, which must have been originally strong, suffered permanent deterioration from all these injurious influences. The bones were imperfectly developed; and bent clavicles and a slight distortion of the spine, with chronic irritability of the mucous membrane of the lungs, were the consequences. The benches of the High School had no backs, but some of them stood close to the walls. I suffered greatly from inability to sit upright, during the long hours of confinement, on the seats away from the wall; and have no doubt that then and there the distortion of the spine was produced. I often abstained from getting up to the third "form" because the fourth stood next the wall and supported my back!