ABSTRACT
My life at school was like that of any other schoolboy. I shall not record, even if I could remember, how often I was flogged when I did not deserve it, or how often I escaped when I did. Five years of my life passed away, of which I have nothing to relate but that I learned to whip a top, and to play at ball and marbles, each in their season; that I acquired in due course the usual quantity of greek and latin; and perpetrated in my time, I presume, the usual quantity of mischief. But in the sixth a year of my school-boy life an opportunity for unusual mischief occurred. An incident b happened, which, however trifling in itself, can never be effaced from my memory. Every particular connected with it is indeed as fresh in my recollection, as it was the day after it happened. It was a circumstance which wakened long dormant associations, / and combined them with all the feelings and principles of party spirit; feelings and principles c which had first been inculcated by my father at home, and which had been exercised so well and so continually by my companions at school, as to have become the governing power of my mind.
