These were its changefulness, its irresponsibility, its little adventures, that always had our bodily solace for their end. We pilfered orchards, snatched an occasional fat duckling from a pond, smoked hives at night and carried away the dripping comb to eat under warm ricks in the moonlight. And I had little to complain of ill-treatment, except when engaged professionally. My master’s ample receptivities laughed and grew fat on self-indulgence. Liquor made him, to my good fortune, beatifically helpless; rich meats, paternally benevolent, and even poetical. It was only in business that he chastised, with a large and incorruptible immorality. I learned the jargon more readily than I did the practice of my abominable trade. My first ascent of a chimney was a hideous experience--an ascent into hell, reversing all geographical orthodoxy. But my particular devil was a Moloch, who would either be served by exaltation or vindicate his majesty in smoke and fire. He was diplomatic to put me through my first paces, so to speak, in a dismantled vicarage that was in preparation for a new tenant. He simply thrust an iron scraper into my hand, and, with the briefest directions, drove me up. I was refractory, of course; and at that, without wordy persuasion, he lit a brand of tow and applied it to my bare ankles. The pain made me scream and writhe, as he had philosophically counted upon its doing. Involuntarily I found myself ascending the flue, as an awn of barley travels up inside one’s sleeve. The very ease of it made me rebel, and I stopped. Immediately the brand below, flaring at the end of a stick, was lifted to spur me. Frenzied and sobbing, I felt its hot rowel, and struggled on. The soot, with which the chimney was choked, began to fall upon me, half stifling, and filling my pockets. Then self-preservation, the great mother, recalled to me my directions. I looked up, and saw a far eye of light denoting freedom, and I began desperately to scrape clear my passage towards it, letting always the black raff descend between my knees before I rose to take its place. The eye enlarged, and with it grew the dawn of a strange new enthusiasm. I rose to it, like a fish to the angle, as my master had calculated I should. These fiends bait their hooks with heaven. Suddenly, the last feet were conquered, and I emerged, and saw below me a beautiful village prospect of trees and homesteads.