ich he did whenever he thought proper.

Nor was my learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I had
an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in
accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and a
fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power, and
she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid
the foundation of my future success in life. The common dances I learned
(as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants' hall, which,
you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I was considered
unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig.

In the matter of book-learning, I had always an uncommon taste for
reading plays and novels, as the best part of a gentleman's polite
education, and never let a pedlar pass the village, if I had a penny,
without having a ballad or two from him. As for your dull grammar,
and Greek and Latin and stuff, I have always hated them from my youth
upwards, and said, very unmistakably, I would have none of them.

This I proved pretty clearly at the age of thirteen, when my aunt Biddy
Brady's legacy of L100 came in to mamma, who thought to employ the sum
on my education, and sent me to Doctor Tobias Tickler's famous academy
at Ballywhacket--Backwhacket, as my uncle used to call it. But six
weeks after I had been consigned to his reverence, I suddenly made my
appearance again at Castle Brady, having walked forty miles from the
odious place, and left the Doctor in a state near upon apoplexy. The
fact was, that at taw, prison-bars, or boxing, I was at the head of the
school, but could not be brought to excel in the classics; and after
having been flogged seven times, without its doing me the least good
in my Latin, I refused to submit altogether (finding it useless) to an
eighth application of the rod. 'Try some other way, sir,' said I, when
he was for horsing me once more; but he wouldn't; whereon, and to defend
myself, I flung a slate at him, and knocked down a Scotch usher with a
leaden inkstand. All the lads huzza'd at this, and some or the servants
wanted to stop me; but taking out a large clasp-knife that my cousin
Nora had given me, I swore I would plunge it into the waistcoat of the
first man who dared to balk me, and faith they let me pass on. I slept
that night twenty miles off Ballywhacket, at the house of a cottier, who
gave me potatoes and milk, and to whom I gave a hundred guineas after,
when I came