This was a sad outset for a votary of the muse.  It ought to have cured me of my passion for poetry; but it only confirmed it, for I felt the spirit of a martyr rising within me.  What was as well, perhaps, it cured me of my passion for the young lady; for I felt so indignant at the ignominious horsing I had incurred in celebrating her charms, that I could not hold up my head in church.

Fortunately for my wounded sensibility, the midsummer holydays came on, and I returned home.  My mother, as usual, inquired into all my school concerns, my little pleasures, and cares, and sorrows; for boyhood has its share of the one as well as of the others.  I told her all, and she was indignant at the treatment I had experienced.  She fired up at the arrogance of the squire, and the prudery of the daughter; and as to the school-master, she wondered where was the use of having school-masters, and why boys could not remain at home and be educated by tutors, under the eye of their mothers.  She asked to see the verses I had written, and she was delighted with them; for to confess the truth, she had a pretty taste in poetry.  She even showed to them to the parson’s wife, who protested they were charming, and the parson’s three daughters insisted on each having a copy of them.

All this was exceedingly balsamic, and I was still more consoled and encouraged, when the young ladies, who were the blue-stockings of the neighborhood, and had read Dr. Johnson’s lives quite through, assured my mother that great geniuses never studied, but were always idle; upon which I began to surmise that I was myself something out of the common run.  My father, however, was of a very different opinion, for when my mother, in the pride of her heart, showed him my copy of verses, he threw them out of the window, asking her “if she meant to make a ballad monger of the boy.”  But he was a careless, common-thinking man, and I cannot say that I ever loved him much; my mother absorbed all my filial affection.

I used occasionally, during holydays, to be sent on short visits to the uncle, who was to make me his heir; they thought it would keep me in his mind, and render him fond of me.  He was a withered, anxious-looking old fellow, and lived in a desolate old country seat, which he suffered to go to ruin from absolute niggardliness.  He kept but one man-servant, who had lived, or rather starved, with him for years.  No woman was allowed to sleep in the house.  A daughter of the old servant lived by the gate, in what had been a porter’s lodge, and was permitted to come into the house about an hour each day, to make the beds, and cook a morsel of provisions.