Hostilities having thus commenced, they soon grew hot, and were pursued with bitterness, tyranny, and malignity. Proceeding from bad to worse, after a while every thing I did was wrong. In proportion as his frenzy became hateful or rather terrible to his own imagination, his cruelty increased. He seemed, in my instance, to have the dread upon him of committing some injury so violent as perhaps to bring him to the gallows; and several times in his chafing fits declared his fear. This idea haunted him so much that he adopted a new mode of conduct with me, and, instead of kicking me, knocking me down, or hurling the first thing that came to hand at me, gave himself time enough to take the horsewhip. Yet he could not always be thus cautious; and even when he was, such infernal discipline, though less dangerous, was more intolerable. The scenes I went through with this man, the sufferings I endured, and the stupifying terrors that seized me if I saw but his shadow, I can never forget. Every thing I did was a motive for chastisement; one day it was for having turned the horses out to graze, and the very next for suffering them to stand in the stable. The cattle of his neighbour, for whom he had a mortal enmity, broke into his field during the night; and for this I was most unmercifully flogged the next morning. The pretence was my not having told him that the fence was defective. Rainy weather made him fret, and then I was sure of a beating. If it were fine, he was all hurry, anxiety, and impatience; and to escape the wicked itching of his fingers was impossible. One effect that he produced might be thought remarkable, had we not the history of Sparta in its favour; and did we not occasionally observe the like in other boys, under tyrannical treatment. The efforts I was obliged to make, to endure the terrible punishment he inflicted and live, at last rendered me, to a certain degree, insensible of pain. They were powerfully aided indeed by the indignant detestation which I felt, and by the something like defiance with which it enabled me to treat him.