It was in vain that I swore I would not leave my faithful and Afflicted
Columbine. It was in vain that I tore myself from their grasp, and flew
to her; and vowed to protect her; and wiped the tears from her cheek,
and with them a whole blush that might have vied with the carnation for
brilliancy. My persecutors were inflexible; they even seemed to exult
in our distress; and to enjoy this theatrical display of dirt, and
finery, and tribulation. I was carried off in despair, leaving my
Columbine destitute in the wide world; but many a look of agony did I
cast back at her, as she stood gazing piteously after me from the brink
of Hempstead Hill; so forlorn, so fine, so ragged, so bedraggled, yet
so beautiful.
Thus ended my first peep into the world. I returned home, rich in
good-for-nothing experience, and dreading the reward I was to receive
for my improvement. My reception, however, was quite different from
what I had expected. My father had a spice of the devil in him, and did
not seem to like me the worse for my freak, which he termed "sowing my
wild oats." He happened to have several of his sporting friends to dine
with him the very day of my return; they made me tell some of my
adventures, and laughed heartily at them. One old fellow, with an
outrageously red nose, took to me hugely. I heard him whisper to my
father that I was a lad of mettle, and might make something clever; to
which my father replied that "I had good points, but was an ill-broken
whelp, and required a great deal of the whip.
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