THE NATURALIST DEVELOPING. 61 



those wild symphonies, with their deep, mellow, muffled roar, 

 and I would rock my perilous perch in reckless sweepings, 

 to and fro, until it swung me in delicious vaultings through 

 the resonant tumult, like a sea-bird lifted on the storm-tossed 

 waves. 



Many a ferruling has climbing for such a swing, or for a 

 bird's nest, cost me, savagely laid on by a brutal and captious 

 pedagogue ; and I hate the mean oppressor to this day ! I 

 was a scape-grace truant, to be sure ; but God had made the 

 glad sun and beautiful earth that wooed my lagging steps, and 

 I should not have been bruised and scarred by a base, thick- 

 blooded wretch, because I yielded an hour to their holy spell, 

 and could forget, amid scenes of such enchantment, even the 

 terrors of his gloomy reign. 



Verily, that " Old Field Schoolmaster" will have many 

 grievous sins to answer for in his day of account. May the 

 justice that shall be measured unto him be more lenient than 

 any he meted out to me ! 



I fought him at last, tooth and finger nails, with the scorn- 

 ful but futile spite of the little warrior King Bird, caught 

 napping by the claws of a carrion crow. 



I ran away to my friends, and was protected from his ven- 

 geance. Dread was the ire that shook his mighty soul when 

 he saw that the victim was beyond the reach of his tyranny ! 

 It rose and expanded into prophecy, and he registered the 

 vow before the Fates, that he would live to see me the worst 

 boy in the county " hanged !" 



Ha ! ha ! It might certainly have befallen me, as with 

 Absalom, to have been hung by the hair in a vine or tree-top, 

 for daily I ran the risk in my predacious climbing, but, as 

 yet, the neck of " the worst boy in the county" claims to be 

 innocent of any unpleasant familiarity with hemp ! May the 

 shadow of that prophecy never be less ! Ah, boys who loved 

 the green-wood better than the horn-book, saw hard times in 

 my young days. 



