ish the _b_ from the _d_, nor the _p_ from the _q_; but he had
never even heard that he had a right hand and a left until he came to
the school--and how could it be expected?

Scarce, however, had he mastered the alphabet, until the faculties of
the deformed began to expand. He now both understood and felt what it
was to learn. He passed from class to class with a rapidity that
astonished his teacher. He could not join in the boisterous sports of
his schoolfellows, and while they were engaged in their pastime, he
sought solitude, and his task accompanied him. He possessed strong
natural talents, and his infirmities gave them the assistance of
industry. His teacher noted these things in the cripple, and he was
gratified with them; but he hesitated to express his feelings openly,
lest the charge of partiality should be brought against him. Ebenezer,
however, had entered the academy as the butt of his schoolfellows--they
mocked, they mimicked, they tormented, they despised, or affected to
despise him; and his talents and progress, instead of abating their
persecutions, augmented them. His teacher was afraid to show him more
kindness than he showed to others; and his schoolfellows gloried in
annoying the cripple--they persecuted, they shunned, they hated him more
than even his mother did. He began to hate the world, for he had found
none that would love him. His teacher was the only human being that had
ever whispered to him words of praise or of kindness, and that had
always been in cold, guarded, and measured terms.

Before he was eighteen, he had acquired all the knowledge that his
teacher could impart, and he returned to the cottage among the
mountains. There, however, he was again subjected to a persecution more
barbarous than that which he had met with from his schoolfellows. Mrs
Baird mocked, insulted, and drove him from her presence; and her
domestic showed him neither kindness nor respect. In stature, he
scarcely exceeded five feet; and his body was feeble as well as
deformed. The cruelty with which he had been treated had given an
asperity to his temper, and made him almost a hater of the human race;
and these feelings had lent their character to his countenance, marking
its naturally harsh expression with suspicion and melancholy.

He was about five-and-twenty when the pangs and the terrors of death
fell upon her whom he regarded as his parent. She died--as a sinner
dies--with insulted eternity frowning to rece