Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/128

118 to which it is adapted and which influence its conditions, the best intentions may inflict only suffering when pleasure is meant to be given; and that this holds as true in the case of human beings as in that of rabbits.

His father took a high Tory newspaper, and its chronicles were both intelligible and interesting. It was full of wars and rumors of wars, hangings, floggings, burnings, and slayings, and these were illustrated from time to time by doings in the town. He saw panoramas of battles, celebrations of victories, public floggings and hangings, and heard the running accompaniment of discussion among the workmen in his father's brewery. But the war was the great educator. He and his brothers had cannons of all sizes and sorts, and, as they grew up, pistols. Cartridges were given them, and they spent their spare pence for powder, lead, a bullet-mould, and a ladle. He says:

We kept the neighborhood in disquiet with the noise of explosions, and when it was found that we used balls there was fear that we should injure ourselves. And there was risk. I was firing at a mark on the inner side of the door of my father's garden, having locked it to prevent accident. The door was so thick that bullets lodged in it; but on one occasion I struck a knot which the ball drove out and made a large hole. No harm came, as no one was passing, but I quietly bought a piece of putty to fill up the hole and some brown paint to paint it over, and the evil deed was never discovered. I got a foot of the butt end of a common musket, mounted it on a stock and wheels, put it on an ale-cask, pointed it at a mark eighteen inches square supported on a stalk, and fired till I knocked it to shreds; but my crowning glory was the actual firing with my own hand of one of the great guns of the half-moon battery of Edinburgh Castle. I made friends with a bombardier who put the port-fire into my hand and gave the word "fire," and the welkin roared with the report of the gun. I was then not more than twelve years old, and to me there was grandeur in the exploit.

Then, again, in the neighborhood of the brewery were tan-works, currying-shops, an iron-foundry, a pump-maker's yard and a blacksmith's shop which he frequented, observing what was done in them and mastering the theory of their operations. He understood the business of the brewery, and all sorts of incidents constantly occurring afforded practical illustrations of the principles he had learned. In this way he added to his general intelligence and kept active his understanding, which was sent to sleep at school.

He had an intense love of nature, and of whatever displayed power and contrivance. He says of a dam-head where the water fell twenty feet:

I have stood in a pouring rain, thrilled with delightful emotion, gazing on the thundering cataract, for such it seemed to me. At a later period the falls of Niagara did not excite a stronger feeling of the sublime than did this waterfall of my childhood.

His four years of suffering under Mr. Fraser came to an end in 1801, and, when he left the class-room for the last time, he says:

I ran down the stair three steps at a time, in an ecstasy of pleasure; and on