It took me some time to learn the unimportance of tears in a workhouse. Hitherto tears had brought me relief in one shape or another, but from this time forth they availed nothing. James Francis, the one-handed school-master into whose stern grasp Dick Price had resigned me, was little disposed to soften the blow dealt my sensibilities by treachery. Though forty-five years have passed since that dreadful evening, my resentment has not a whit abated. Dick’s guile was well meant, no doubt, but I then learned for the first time that one’s professed friend can smile while preparing to deal a mortal blow, and that a man can mask evil with a show of goodness. It would have been far better for me if Dick, being stronger than I, had employed compulsion, instead of shattering my confidence and planting the first seeds of distrust in a child’s heart. Francis, soured by misfortune, brutal of temper, and callous of heart, through years of control over children, was not a man to understand the cause of my inconsolable grief. Nor did he try. Time, however, alleviated my affliction, and the lapse of uncounted days, bringing their quota of smarts and pains, tended to harden the mind for life’s great task of suffering. No Greek helot or dark slave ever underwent such discipline as the boys of St. Asaph under the heavy masterful hand of James Francis. The ready back-slap in the face, the stunning clout over the ear, the strong blow with the open palm on alternate cheeks, which knocked our senses into confusion, were so frequent that it is a marvel we ever recovered them again. Whatever might be the nature of the offence, or merely because his irritable mood required vent, our poor heads were cuffed, and slapped, and pounded, until we lay speechless and streaming with blood. But though a tremendously rough and reckless striker with his fist or hand, such blows were preferable to deliberate punishment with the birch, ruler, or cane, which, with cool malice, he inflicted. These instruments were always kept ready at hand. It simply depended upon how far the victim was from him, or how great was his fury, as to which he would choose to castigate us with. If we happened to be called up to him to recite our lessons, then the bony hand flew mercilessly about our faces and heads, or rammed us in the stomachs until our convulsions became alarming. If, while at the desk, he was reading to us, he addressed a question to some boy, the slightest error in reply would either be followed by a stinging blow from the ruler, or a thwack with his blackthorn. If a series of errors were discovered in our lessons, then a vindictive scourging of the offender followed, until he was exhausted, or our lacerated bodies could bear no more.[1]