20 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



be, and saw us. I could see by his agitated 

 motions, and his uplifted hands, that he was put 

 into a state much easier to be felt than described. 

 After having been guilty of misdemeanors of this 

 kind, I did not go back to school for the remainder 

 of the day ; but waded, or otherwise crossed, the 

 river, and sat down or amused myself among the 

 bushes on the water banks, until the rest of the 

 scholars left school, when I joined them and went 

 home. But as it would not have been safe for me 

 to go to bed (if conscious of guilt, or if otherwise 

 betrayed) for fear of a visit from my father, I 

 always took up my abode for the night in the byer 

 loft, among the hay or straw, knowing well that, 

 when his passion subsided, I should escape a beat- 

 ing from his hands. 



The first cause of my preceptor beginning a 

 severe system of flogging (beside the quantum I 

 received for mischievous acts), was for not getting 

 off my Latin tasks. When this was not done to 

 his mind, he, by way of punishment, gave me 

 another still worse to do, and still longer, till at 

 length I gave up even attempting to get through 

 them at all, and began to stand a flogging without 

 being much put about by it. I think (at this day) 

 my very worthy preceptor, in following this rather 

 indiscriminate system of severe punishments, was 

 wrong. He often beat his own son,* a youth of an 

 uncommonly mild, kind, and cheerful disposition, 

 whom I felt more distressed at seeing punished 



* Christopher Gregson, of Apothecaries Hall, London. He died 

 [about] :8i[8], and was buried at Ovingham. [During the whole of 

 his lifetime he preserved an unbroken friendship with Bewick. Many 

 of his letters, and those of his brother Philip, who had an appointment 

 in the Custom House, are included in the Bewick MSS.] 



