Page:The Life and Struggles of William Lovett.djvu/25

Rh do with it, though the germs must undoubtedly have been wafted towards me. I must here state that the disease at that time being greatly dreaded, I was constantly cautioned by my friends to avoid all children that had had it recently, and being thus brought suddenly face to face with it, with no means of escape, I naturally felt alarmed. And what a terrible disease it was I can well remember, for I think I was seven or eight years old. But bad as I had it I was not marked with it as numbers of my schoolfellows were; for so terrible were its ravages at that period, that I can vividly remember the number of seamed and scarred faces among them. Vaccination at that time had not been introduced into our town, though inoculation for the small-pox was occasionally resorted to; but it was looked upon as sinful and a doubting of providence, although about that period one in every fourteen persons born died from its ravages. Having made but little progress at this school, when I got well I was sent to another about a mile from the town and near the parish church. Here I learned to write tolerably well, and to know a little of arithmetic and the catechism, and this formed the extent of my scholastic acquirements. I remember being once flogged severely by the master, and I think I deserved it. It was in the winter time, and his little boy had set a trap in the garden for catching birds, when myself and another boy seeing some birds in the trap pulled down the opening and caught them. We then wrung their necks, brought them into the school, and put them into our school bags unobserved. Not having however wrung their necks effectually, in a short time they began to flutter, and this led to our detection and punishment. This master was, however, a very clever and ingenious person, and I think also a bit of a wit: for he being too busy on one occasion to set me a copy requested me to write one for myself. From some curious notions I had formed of royalty, I wrote for my copy—"All Kings have long heads," which when my master saw, he wrote on the opposite page, "All horses have longer heads." To prove how anxious my poor mother was to check the least deviation from what she believed to be right and just in