Much has happened in your absence, which is proper to be known
to you; but our discourse will be best deferred till to-morrow. I will
come into your chamber by day-dawn, and unfold to you particulars." "Nay," said he, "withdraw not on my account. If I go to my chamber, it
will not be to sleep, but to meditate, especially after your assurance
that something of moment has occurred in my absence. My thoughts,
independently of any cause of sorrow or fear, have received an impulse
which solitude and darkness will not stop. It is impossible to know too
much for our safety and integrity, or to know it too soon. What has
happened?" I did not hesitate to comply with his request, for it was not difficult
to conceive that, however tired the limbs might be, the adventures of
this day would not be easily expelled from the memory at night. I told
him the substance of the conversation with Mrs. Althorpe. He smiled at
those parts of the narrative which related to himself; but when his
father's depravity and poverty were mentioned, he melted into tears. "Poor wretch! I, that knew thee in thy better days, might have easily
divined this consequence. I foresaw thy poverty and degradation in the
same hour that I left thy roof. My soul drooped at the prospect, but I
said, It cannot be prevented, and this reflection was an antidote to
grief; but, now that thy ruin is complete, it seems as if some of it
were imputable to me, who forsook thee when the succour and counsel of a
son were most needed. Thou art ignorant and vicious, but thou art my
father still. I see that the sufferings of a better man than thou art
would less afflict me than thine. Perhaps it is still in my power to
restore thy liberty and good name, and yet--that is a fond wish. Thou
art past the age when the ignorance and grovelling habits of a human
being are susceptible of cure." There he stopped, and, after a gloomy
pause, continued:--

       *       *       *       *       *

I am not surprised or afflicted at the misconceptions of my neighbours
with relation to my own character. Men must judge from what they see;
they must build their conclusions on their knowledge. I never saw in the
rebukes of my neighbours any thing but laudable abhorrence of vice. They
were too eager to blame, to collect materials of censure rather than of
praise. It was not me whom they hated and despised. It was the phantom
that passed under my name, which existed only in their imagination, and
which was worthy of all their scorn and all their enmity. What I appeared to be in their eyes was as much the object of my own
disapprobation as of theirs. Their reproaches only evinced the rectitude
of their decisions, as well as of my own. I drew from them new motives
to complacency. They fortified my perseverance in the path which I had
chosen as best; they raised me higher in my own esteem; they heightened
the claims of the reproachers themselves to my respect and my
gratitude. They thought me slothful, incurious, destitute of knowledge and of all
thirst of knowledge, insolent, and profligate. They say that in the
treatment of my father I have been ungrateful and inhuman. I have stolen
his property, and deserted him in his calamity. Therefore they hate and
revile me. It is well; I love them for these proofs of their discernment
and integrity. Their indignation at wrong is the truest test of their
virtue. It is true that they mistake me, but that arises from the circumstances
of our mutual situation. They examined what was exposed to their view,
they grasped at what was placed within their reach. To decide contrary
to appearances, to judge from what they knew not, would prove them to be
brutish and not rational, would make their decision of no worth, and
render them, in their turn, objects of neglect and contempt. It is true that I hated school; that I sought occasions of absence, and
finally, on being struck by the master, determined to enter his presence
no more. I loved to leap, to run, to swim, to climb trees and to clamber
up rocks, to shroud myself in thickets and stroll among woods, to obey
the impulse of the moment, and to prate or be silent, just as my humour
prompted me. All this I loved more than to go to and fro in the same
path, and at stated hours to look off and on a book, to read just as
much and of such a kind, to stand up and be seated, just as another
thought proper to direct. I hated to be classed, cribbed, rebuked, and
feruled at the pleasure of one who, as it seemed to me, knew no guide in
his rewards but caprice, and no prompter in his punishments but passion. It is true that I took up the spade and the hoe as rarely, and for as
short a time, as possible. I preferred to ramble in the forest and
loiter on the hill; perpetually to change the scene; to scrutinize the
endless variety of objects; to compare one leaf and pebble with another;
to pursue those trains of thought which their resemblances and
differences suggested; to inquire what it was that gave them this place,
structure, and form, were more agreeable employments than ploughing and
threshing. My father could well afford to hire labour. What my age and my
constitution enabled me to do could be done by a sturdy boy, in half the
time, with half the toil, and with none of the reluctance. The boy was a
bond-servant, and the cost of his clothing and food was next to nothing. True it is, that my service would have saved him even this expense, but
my motives for declining the effort were not hastily weighed or
superficially examined. These were my motives. My frame was delicate and feeble. Exposure to wet blasts and vertical
suns was sure to make me sick. My father was insensible to this
consequence; and no degree of diligence would please him but that which
would destroy my health. My health was dearer to my mother than to me. She was more anxious to exempt me from possible injuries than reason
justified; but anxious she was, and I could not save her from anxiety
but by almost wholly abstaining from labour. I thought her peace of mind
was of some value, and that, if the inclination of either of my parents
must be gratified at the expense of the other, the preference was due to
the woman who bore me; who nursed me in disease; who watched over my
safety with incessant tenderness; whose life and whose peace were
involved in mine. I should have deemed myself brutish and obdurately
wicked to have loaded her with fears and cares merely to smooth the brow
of a froward old man, whose avarice called on me to sacrifice my ease
and my health, and who shifted to other shoulders the province of
sustaining me when sick, and of mourning for me when dead. I likewise believed that it became me to reflect upon the influence of
my decision on my own happiness; and to weigh the profits flowing to my
father from my labour, against the benefits of mental exercise, the
pleasures of the woods and streams, healthful sensations, and the luxury
of musing. The pecuniary profit was petty and contemptible.