ucidly I am not, I
might well exclaim, in the very vein of Rousseau, Alas! it has been ever
the misfortune of my life that, save by a few friends, I have never been
understood!

I was evidently out-Francieing Francie; and the parents of my young
friend, who saw that I had acquired considerable influence over him, and
were afraid lest I should make another Francie of _him_, had become
naturally enough desirous to break off our intimacy, when there occurred
an unlucky accident, which served materially to assist them in the
design. My friend's father was the master of a large trading smack,
which, in war times, carried a few twelve-pounders, and was furnished
with a small magazine of powder and shot; and my friend having secured
for himself from the general stock, through the connivance of the
ship-boy, an entire cannon cartridge, containing some two or three
pounds of gunpowder, I was, of course, let into the secret, and invited
to share in the sport and the spoil We had a glorious day together in
his mother's garden: never before did such magnificent volcanoes break
forth out of mole-hills, or were plots of daisies and violets so
ruthlessly scorched and torn by the explosion of deep laid mines; and
though a few mishaps did happen to over-forward fingers, and to
eye-brows that were in the way, our amusements passed off innocuously on
the whole, and evening saw nearly the half of our precious store
unexhausted. It was garnered up by my friend in an unsuspected corner of
the garret in which he slept, and would have been safe, had he not been
seized, when going to bed, with a yearning desire to survey his treasure
by candle-light; when an unlucky spark from the flame exploded the
whole. He was so sadly burnt about the face and eyes as to be blind for
several days after; but, amid smoke and confusion, he gallantly bolted
his garret-door, and, while the inmates of the household, startled by
the shock and the noise, came rushing up stairs, sturdily refused to let
any of them in. Volumes of gunpowder reek issued from every crack and
cranny, and his mother and sisters were prodigiously alarmed. At length,
however, he capitulated--terms unknown; and I, next morning, heard with
horror and dismay of the accident. It had been matter of agreement
between us on the previous day, mainly in order to screen the fine
fellow of a ship-boy, that I should be regarded as the owner of the
powder; but here was a consequence on which I had not ca