I used often however, to
offend my father at hunting dinners, by taking the wrong side in
politics. My father was amazingly ignorant--so ignorant, in fact, as
not to know that he knew nothing. He was staunch, however, to church
and king, and full of old-fashioned prejudices. Now, I had picked up a
little knowledge in politics and religion, during my rambles with the
strollers, and found myself capable of setting him right as to many of
his antiquated notions. I felt it my duty to do so; we were apt,
therefore, to differ occasionally in the political discussions that
sometimes arose at these hunting dinners.
I was at that age when a man knows least and is most vain of his
knowledge; and when he is extremely tenacious in defending his opinion
upon subjects about which he knows nothing. My father was a hard man
for any one to argue with, for he never knew when he was refuted. I
sometimes posed him a little, but then he had one argument that always
settled the question; he would threaten to knock me down. I believe he
at last grew tired of me, because I both out-talked and outrode him.
The red-nosed squire, too, got out of conceit of me, because in the
heat of the chase, I rode over him one day as he and his horse lay
sprawling in the dirt. My father, therefore, thought it high time to
send me to college; and accordingly to Trinity College at Oxford was I
sent.
I had lost my habits of study while at home; and I was not likely to
find them again at college.
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