University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
Robin escapes from slavery, and begins to be a young person of
promise.

At the time of M'Goggin's appearance and usurpation,
I was, or (for the matter was by no means
certain) was supposed to be very nearly seventeen
years old; an age at which the reader may be surprised
at finding me still a schoolboy.

To explain this circumstance, I may observe,
first, that boys in my day, and in that country, were
not supposed to reach the years of discretion so
soon as they do now; it being no uncommon thing
to see gawky fellows of eighteen or nineteen, with
mown chins and bass voices, sitting at the desk in
school, as simple as their neighbours, or playing
shinney on the green with all the zeal and abandon
of boyhood. This undoubtedly arose, in a great
measure, from the defective system and means of
education; but in part also, from the negligent way
in which boys were brought up by their parents;
who, having their heads full of their own business,
were usually glad to delegate all charge of them,
with all the trouble, to ill-rewarded and incompetent
schoolmasters.

When boys were intended for college, greater
pains were indeed taken to find them good teachers,
who inspired them with early manliness; but in the

common schools, where the majority of lads were
to finish their education, the masters being such
ignoramuses as I have described, they were commonly
left to themselves, and remained, to all purposes,
boys, until their education, or rather the
period assigned to it, was completed; when, being
taken away from school, they immediately became
men; the change being effected, like that from day
to night in tropical regions, without any twilight, or
gradual merging of the one into the other. The
manner of the transformation was as ridiculous as
its instantaneousness was striking. A neckcloth and a
pair of high heeled boots were put on; and then the
wearer suddenly amazed his friends by beginning to
talk grammar—that is, by saying, for “them fellers”
“those felloes,” for “me and him,” “he and I,” &c.
—using big words, and trouncing all the boys, his
associates of the day before, who accosted him with
the old familiar nickname of friendship, instead of
saluting him by the honourable title of Mister.

There was the additional reason for my remaining
so long a schoolboy, that I was more than twelve
years old before I began my education, and was, at
that period, as I have mentioned, several years
behind my age, as it respected the growth of both
mind and body. It is true, that, having once taken
a start, I was soon on a par, as to intelligence, with
other boys of my age, and, in some respects, even
advanced beyond them; but I was certainly, like
the rest, a mere boy, so long as I remained at school
—and, indeed, as the reader may perhaps think, for
a good while afterwards.

From what I have said of the anxiety of parents
to escape the charge and trouble of their children, it
will not seem very surprising that little was done on
their part, to abate or punish the excesses into which

we were driven by the belligerent and democratic
spirit prevailing amongst us. There was, undoubtedly,
great commotion among them at every new
flogging and expulsion of the master they had set
over us; at such times they scolded us with great
energy, expatiated upon the enormity of the offence,
and even threatened us with the terrors of private
castigation;—nay, sometimes, even vowed they
would give us up to the civil authorities, to be
punished for riot and assault and battery. As for
expelling us the school, that was never talked of, for
the excellent reason that, as every one of us hated
school more than any thing else in the world, so expulsion
would have been esteemed the greatest
favour they could have bestowed on us. It is very
certain that, whatever they did to bring us back to
reason, they failed to effect their purpose.

In my own case, I must confess, that the share I
had in all these excesses was very disagreeable to
my good patron; who, although immersed in the
cares of his laborious and harassing profession, was
yet at pains to watch over me as much as he could,
to admonish me of the folly and wickedness (for so
he called it,) of my behaviour, and, pointing out the
peculiar impropriety and heinousness of it in my
case, to exhort me to such modesty of deportment
and devotion to my studies as my peculiar situation
made the more imperatively necessary. Such discourses
had their effect only for a time; for, whatever
were the virtuous resolutions I framed, and the promises
I made him, I was sure, so easily was I led
away by the example and incitements of my school-mates,
to be as bad, in a week or two, as ever.

This incorrigibleness, and the disappointment of the
hopes he had once indulged of my growing up worthy
of his care and affection, his disgust of my boisterous

conduct, and indignation at my folly, gradually
undermined me in his regards; and the alienation
was the more rapid, as well as excusable, because
he had now an object upon whom nature
impelled him to lavish all his richest affections.

His little daughter of whom I have spoken—her
name was Nanna, derived, I believe, from some
Swedish ancestress on the maternal side—as one
whom, from her infirm constitution, every body
almost daily expected to see fall into the tomb,
began, about the period of her mother's death, to
exhibit symptoms of returning health; which being
taken immediate advantage of by her skilful parent,
she was in a few months, to his own inexpressible
joy and the amazement of every one else, restored
to complete health. The development of her faculties,
her rapid advance in beauty, grace, sweetness of
disposition—in every thing that could warm the
heart, and inflame the pride, of a doting father, were
indeed surprising; and at the time of which I speak
—that is when I reached what was supposed to be
the verge of my eighteenth year—she was a creature,
being then nearly fifteen years old, whom no one
could look upon without interest and admiration.
She was the loveliest of creatures; and I, who had,
from habit, grown to regard her as, and to call her,
a sister, was as proud of her beauty as was my patron,
her father himself. It was not, therefore,
unnatural, having such a being, his own offspring,
to love, that he should love me less; and whatever
pain I felt at the change in his affections—for, boy
as I was, I perceived there was a change—I ceased
to regret it, when I thought that he had taken from
me, only to bestow on Nanna. However, I do not
intend to be sentimental.

It could not be otherwise than that such a being,

with whom my daily and hourly intercourse was
that of a brother, should, sooner or later, exercise a
strong and happy influence, even without knowing
it herself, over both my manners and my feelings;
and it is to the commencement of that influence, more
than to the remonstrances of my patron, that I date
the first improvement in both. So true it is, that
the silent, and even unsuspected, influence of woman
sways the heart more strongly to virtue and manliness
than the wisest admonitions of sages.

I felt this influence for the first time, when rushing
into the before mentioned battle with President
M'Goggin; which, indeed, I entered into with no
small degree of reluctance; though as M'Goggin was
such a champion as I had never before broken lance
with, I cannot, for the life of me, say whether there
was not quite as much deterring influence of another
kind—videlicet, a fear of the consequences. But
that battle over, I am very certain, I began to experience
the unmixed influence of Nanna in the
feelings that followed; for I was ashamed of myself
for having got such a flogging; whereas I never remember
to have experienced any shame after a flogging
before, the whole gist of the grief, in such
cases, lying only in the pain of the blows.

And I felt that influence still more strongly in a
desire that immediately seized me to leave the school;
and that, not merely for the purpose of escaping
similar humiliations fur the future, of which, I confess,
I had no little dread, but that I might begin
a course of reform and amendment in my life and
manners, which, I had a vague notion, I could not
so easily do, while remaining a boy at school. In
this feeling, I took advantage of a lecture my patron
gave me on the subject of this last and greatest, the
M'Goggin battle, to assure him I was sorry for my

ill deeds, and desirous to live a new life more in consonance
with his wishes; and in fine, begged him, as
that was a necessary preliminary, to take me from
M'Goggin's hands and from school.

To this he consented; and then, having endeavoured
to impress upon my mind a sense of my
peculiar situation, as one which, (putting his own
kindness, and the dependence I might place on it,
out of the question,) should make a youth of spirit
eager to embrace every means of securing his own
independence; and assuring me that he did this, not
by way of hinting an intention of withdrawing his
protection, which he should continue to me, until my
own misconduct rendered it impossible, which he
hoped, notwithstanding all that had passed, should
never be the case: having done this, I say, he offered
to my choice either to go to college, (after having
spent one year in careful preparation at some distant
and secluded school;) which having passed through,
he would then advise with me as to my future course;
or to enter his office, and there, while striving as far
as possible by my own diligent efforts, to repair some
of the deficiencies of my education, to be instructed
by him, by and by, in his own profession, and thus
be prepared for future usefulness in the world.
Either of these plans, he said, I was free to adopt;
and, in either, he would give me all the assistance I
could expect from a parent; but, whichever might
be my choice, he would expect of me a promise of
such diligence and good conduct as it was both a
parent's right and duty to expect.

My first inclinations were very clearly in favour
of the first named proposal; for I thought from
what I had often heard, there must be grand fun at
a college; and, in fact, in the midst of all the solemn
admonitions, and exhortations upon the necessity of

soberness and diligence which my benefactor was
giving me, my imagination was most easily seduced
by the ideas of sport and frolic. To the college,
therefore, I felt strongly inclined; and I was about
to say so, when (and I know not why such a consideration
should enter my brain) I was struck with
the thought that Nanna would not be there; and as
it was but a step in the process of association to
remember that Nanna would be where I was, I
immediately resolved upon the latter proposal; at
which, I thought, the good doctor looked a little
gratified. I promised all he wished as to diligence,
good behaviour, &c.; and should have promised the
contrary, or any thing else, just as easily. In fact,
I was not at all accustomed to trouble myself with
doing things upon reflection, in those days.

The school was left, and in two or three days,
I turned man; that is, I put on the boots and neckcloth
as aforesaid; astonished the grammar and the
dictionary, as well as the neighbours, with the elegance
of my phraseology; and should have been
happy to comply with the last requisite of transformation,
and trounce all my schoolmates for calling
me Sy Tough, instead of Mr. Robin Day, had I not
been afraid—not of angering my patron, for, really,
I forgot him in the premises—but of grieving the
gentle heart of Nanna; who, by some means or
other, became, about this time, inextricably involved
in every net of ratiocination my brain attempted
to weave.

There was but one regret I felt at leaving the
school; which was, that I was in debt to Mr.
M'Goggin for a trouncing, without the means of
making payment; and, indeed, I hated the villain
so heartily for having been the first to make me feel
ashamed of myself, that it was only owing to the

secret influence and oft recurring thought of Nanna
that I did not obey the impulse I felt to pelt him
with stones, whenever I chanced to meet him in
the street—especially as the odious wretch never
passed me, without the insulting salutation—“Good
morrow till ye, ye vagabone: ye'll come to the gallows,
ye divil!”

I wish I had not felt so vindictive, as it would
have saved me a deal of trouble; and, in particular,
the trouble of writing my adventures: but it was
fated I should have satisfaction of President M'Goggin
for all his injuries.