I did not inherit my peccadilloes, as I cannot discover a notorious sinner among my ancestors for nearly two centuries. My father was one of the purest men I ever knew, and his deeds are inscribed on the archives of Rhode Island, in letters that can never be effaced. Although the minds of my parents had a beautiful symmetry, yet I can trace my eccentricity to their parents, who were as strange as Diogenes in his tub, or Zantippe in the streets of Athens torturing poor Socrates. Mrs. Grey was my first school-marm, and Mr. Hill my first school-master, followed by Miss Latham, Mr. Shaw, Pettis, Osborne, Record, Hammond, Gregg and Ainsworth, all of whom I terribly tormented. Although my mother died before I was seven years old, yet I remember the trouble I gave her, and how I cried when the messenger came to the school-house, and told me of her sudden death, and how my father and aunt Lucy wept on my arrival home. My father’s third wife was my first step-mother, and although she was very kind, yet there was a melancholy vacuum in my home, and at eight years old, I sought diversion at the circus and theatre, and resolved to be a circus-rider, and ground and lofty tumbler. But a fall from my horse while standing on one leg, and serious bruises while striving to turn summersets, disgusted me with the circus, and I determined to be an actor, and carried the wardrobes of the actors to and from the theatre, for which I was admitted free. But my father heard of it, and told me not to visit the theatre again. But I went, and he gently whipped me. On the next night, brother Albert accompanied me to the theatre, and while I was wildly screaming at the Dromios, father entered the pit and seized me, amid the convulsions of the audience and actors. On arriving home, he took us down cellar, and began to rope Albert, who instantly bellowed: “O, my salt rheum! O, spare my salt rheum!” Father then grabbed me, and I cried: “O, my boils! O, spare my boils!” when he roped me in a fresh spot, and did not cease until he gave me my own chastisement and Albert’s too, and I never let Ally go with me to the theatre again, as my own licking was about as much as I could endure. But I derided father’s castigation, and the following night, I retired at nine o’clock to my bed-room, in the second story, and tied a rope to the bed-post, and, at the peril of my life, descended the house fronting the yard, and went to the theatre, and about midnight ascended the house, and hauled in the rope, and went to bed. In about a week, John Horsewell got locked out, and I invited him to ascend the rope and sleep with me, to which he readily assented. In the morning, I did not rise at my usual hour, and father came to ascertain the cause, when he heard John Horsewell snoring like thunder under my bed. He looked, and discovered John, and grabbed him by the hair, and spanked him most awfully, and while spanking poor John, I jumped from the bed, and seized my clothes, and