The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias George Smollett
page 78 of 1065 (07%)
page 78 of 1065 (07%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
|
even. while he was fondled on his knee. In one month he put him to
the expense of two guineas in seal-skin; by picking his pocket of divers tobacco-pouches, all of which he in secret committed to the flames. Nor did the caprice of his disposition abstain from the favourite beverage of Trunnion, who more than once swallowed a whole draught in which his brother's snuff-box had been emptied, before he perceived the disagreeable infusion; and one day, when the commodore had chastised him by a gentle tap with his cane, he fell flat on the floor as if he had been deprived of all sense and motion, to the terror and amazement of the striker; and after having filled the whole house with confusion and dismay, opened his eyes, and laughed heartily at the success of his own imposition. It would be an endless and perhaps no very agreeable task, to enumerate all the unlucky pranks he played upon his uncle and others, before he attained the fourth year of his age; about which time he was sent, with an attendant, to a day-school in the neighbourhood, that (to use his good mother's own expression) he might be out of harm's way. Here, however, he made little progress, except in mischief, which he practised with impunity, because the school-mistress would run no risk of disobliging a lady of fortune, by exercising unnecessary severities upon her only child. Nevertheless, Mrs. Pickle was not so blindly partial as to be pleased with such unseasonable indulgence. Perry was taken out of the hands of this courteous teacher, and committed to the instruction of a pedagogue, who was ordered to administer such correction as the boy should in his opinion deserve. This authority he did not neglect to use, his pupil was regularly flogged twice a day; and after having been subjected to this course of discipline for the space of eighteen months, declared the most obstinate, dull, and untoward genius that ever |
|


