The lake was remarkably calm, and the entire passage to Buffalo was for years one of my pleasantest memories. On that first voyage, undoubtedly, was engendered the early love of steamboats, the fruit of which ripened soon afterward into the adventures I am about to relate. Nothing, I am convinced, but this boundless affection for the species of craft in question enables me to remember, as shall be seen directly, the names of all the old lake steamers I had to do with in my boyhood. And this, by the way, is no small internal evidence of the truth of what follows. But I should not have called your attention to the fact, and I should not have been forced to parade my conscientiousness here again, if I had not come already to the most embarrassing period in all my history. Without seeming to manifest a feeling which I am sure I do not now entertain, I cannot write about the two or three miserable years I passed in Buffalo; and, if I omit to write about them, a great share of the dramatic flavor of my story is lost. I cannot, therefore, convey to you even the regret with which I am compelled to pass over this period of my life, because you cannot know, as I think I do, that exactly such a childish experience of unlovely restraint has never yet got into literature. * * * * * Every time I pass the old Public School-house No. 7, in Buffalo, I stop and gaze at it with a queer sort of interest. Yet I cannot confess to any sentimental regard for it; since it was, after a manner, the innocent cause of my enduring, at least, the last six months of my unpleasant life in its neighborhood. If I had not been so interested by day in the Principal and duties of that school, I am sure I should have fled much sooner than I did from the roof which sheltered me of nights. Finally, however, one domestic misunderstanding, greater than many others, brought me to a conclusion which was certainly as comprehensive in its wrath as it may have been lacking in a premise or two of its logic. At this temperate remove from that exciting period I am led, at least, to doubt--in the interest of certain kin of mine, who could hardly have been responsible for facts they knew not of--whether I was not guilty of that poetic fallacy, placed in its first utterance, I believe, in the mouth of an illustrious Trojan, and worn very threadbare ever since in the mouth and practice of almost every one,--whether I did not, that is, learn a great deal too much from one to judge very unjustly of all. At any rate, in the domestic crisis just alluded to, I rebelled against authority whose insignia were fasces of disagreeable beech-whips, and, at the mature age of eleven years, took a solemn vow that I would have nothing more to do with the people of my home circle in Buffalo, or with any whatsoever of my relatives, some of whom had placed me there;--and I ran away. CHAPTER III. A FUGITIVE.