I do not speak of these things as of substantial evils affecting
my condition. Perhaps, in one or more respects, they were benefits.
They taught me humility in the first place, and made that humility
independence, by showing me that the lesson was bestowed in wantonness,
and not with the purpose of improvement. And, in proportion as
my physical nature suffered their neglect, it acquired strength
by the very roughening to which that neglect exposed it. In this
I possessed a vast advantage over my little companion. His frame,
naturally feeble, sunk under the oppressive tenderness to which the
constant care of a vain father, a doting mother, and sycophantic
friends and servants, subjected it. The attrition of boy with boy,
in the half-manly sports of schoolboy life--its very strifes and
scuffles--would have brought his blood into adequate circulation,
and hardened his bones, and given elasticity to his sinews. But
from all these influences, he was carefully preserved and protected.
He was not allowed to run, for fear of being too much heated. He
could not jump, lest he might break a blood-vessel. In the ball
play he might get an eye knocked out; and even tops and marbles
were forbidden, lest he should soil his hands and wear out the knees
of his green breeches. If he indulged in these sports it was only
by stealth, and at the fearful cost of a falsehood on every such
occasion. When will parents learn that entirely to crush and keep
down the proper nature of the young, is to produce inevitable
perversity, and stimulate the boyish ingenuity to crime?
With me the case was very different. If cuffing and kicking could
have killed, I should have died many sudden and severe deaths in
the rough school to which I was sent. If eyes were likely to be lost
in the campus, corded balls of India-rubber, or still harder ones
of wood, impelled by shinny (goff) sticks, would have obliterated
all of mine though they had been numerous as those of Argus. My
limbs and eyes escaped all injury; my frame grew tall and vigorous
in consequence of neglect, even as the forest-tree, left to the
conflict of all the winds of heaven; while my poor little friend,
Edgar, grew daily more and more diminutive, just as some plant,
which nursing and tendance within doors deprive of the wholesome
sunshine and generous breezes of the sky. The paleness of his cheek
increased, the languor of his frame, the meagerness of his form,
the inability of his nature! He was pining rapidly away, in spite
of that excessive care, which, perhaps, had been in the first
instance, the unhappy source of all his feebleness.
He died--and I became an object of greater dislike than ever
to his parents. They could not but contrast my strength, with his
feebleness--my improvement with his decline--and when they remembered
how little had been their regard for me and how much for him--without
ascribing the difference of result to the true cause--they repined
at the ways of Providence, and threw upon me the reproach of it.
They gave me less heed and fewer smiles than ever. If I improved
at school, it was well, perhaps; but they never inquired, and I
could not help fancying that it was with a positive expression of
vexation, that my aunt heard, on one occasion, from my teacher, in
the presence of some guests, that I was likely to be an honor to
the family.