over something, and then a tittering fool named Bentley, exclaimed: "Hello, here comes little Willie." I don't know how I got out. I heard a roar of laughter, I saw grinning faces jumbled together, and then I was outside, standing with my hot hand resting in the frost on the top rail of a fence. Some one was urging me to come back—the neglected girl—but I stood there silent, with my hot hand melting the frost. I went out into the moon-lighted woods, seized a sapling and almost wrenched it from the ground. Down the road I went toward home, but I turned aside and sat on a log. I felt a sense of pain and I opened my hands—I had been cutting my palms with my nails. But in this senseless fury I had made up my mind. I would waylay Bentley and beat him. Hour after hour I sat there. Horses began to canter by; up and down the road there was laughter and merry chatting. The moon was full, and I could plainly see the passers-by. Suddenly I sprang from the log and seized a bridle rein. A girl shrieked and a man cut my hand with a whip, and I jerked the horse to his knees. Bentley shouted that he would kill me if I did not let go, but I heeded not; I jerked him off his horse, kicked his pistol across the road, mashed his mouth, slammed him against the ground. The shrieking girl cried out that I was a brute, and I told her that I could whip her whole family, a charming bit of repartee, I thought, but afterward I remembered that her family consisted of herself and an aged grandmother, and I sent her an abject apology. Bentley's horse cantered away, and I left the fellow lying in the road, with the girl standing over him, shrieking for help. It was all done in a minute, and with jolting tread I stalked away before any one came up. Of course there was a great scandal. My poor mother was grieved and humiliated, ashamed to meet any of the neighbors; and my father swore that instead of becoming a school teacher I ought to turn out as a highwayman. My brothers thought to have some fun with me, but I frightened them with a roar, and for a time they were afraid to smile in my presence. I was almost heartbroken over my disgrace. Without undue praise I can say that I was generous and kindhearted; even as a child I had shown almost a censurable unselfishness; I had given away my playthings, and my sensibilities were so tender that I could not bear the sight of a suffering animal, and I remember that an old man laughed at me because I could not cut the throat of a sheep when the poor thing had been hung up by the heels. And now I was put down as a heartless brute. Bentley's face constantly haunted me. I was afraid that he might die, and once when I heard that he was not likely to get well, I was resolved to go to him, to beg his pardon. Two weeks had passed; it was night and rain was pouring down, but I cared naught for the wetting. I found Bentley sitting up with his face bandaged. His mother frowned at me when she opened the door and saw me standing there under the drip, and it was some time before she asked me to come in, and I have thought that she would have driven me off had not the sight of me, wet and debased, aroused her pity. Bentley held out his hand when I entered the room, and he said, "I don't blame you, Bill. It was mean of me, but I wanted to be smart." I was so full, so choked with emotion, that it was some time before I could say a word. But after a time I spoke of the rain, and told him that I thought that I had heard a wildcat as I came along, which was a lie, for I had heard nothing save the wind and the rain falling on the dead leaves. He laughed and said that he did not suppose that I would have been very much frightened had the cat jumped at me. Then I told him that I was the biggest coward on earth, and sought to prove it by offering to let him kick me as long as he might find it amusing. I told him that everybody despised me for the way I had beaten him, everybody, including my own family, and that I deserved the censure of all good people. We talked a long time, and he laughed a great deal, but when I told him that I was coming over to work for him three weeks, his eyes grew brighter with tears. This filled me up again and I could do nothing but blubber. After a long time I asked him if he would do me a favor, and he said that he would. Then I took out a watch that I had brought in a buckskin bag, and I said, "Here is a thing that used to belong to my grandfather, and it was given me by mother when I was ten years old. It is a fine time-piece and is solid. Now, I want you to take it as a present from me. You said you would do me a favor." But he declared that he could not take it. "Why, I would despise myself if I did," said he. I told him that I would despise myself if he did not. His mother, who had left us alone, came in, smiling, and said that I must not think of parting with so valuable a watch, the mark of my grandfather's gentility, but I put the watch on the table and plunged out into the rain and was gone. Bentley's mother returned the watch the next day, and then there went about the neighborhood a report that I was so much afraid of Bentley's revenge that I had tried to buy him off with a watch. Bentley had said that I should not work for him, but when the time for breaking up the land came, I went over and began to plow the field. His mother came out and compelled me to quit, but I went back at night and plowed while other people slept; and thus I worked until much of his corn-land was broken up. The neighbors said that I had gone insane, and a few days afterward, when I met a woman in the road, she jerked her old mare in an effort to get away, and piteously begged me not to hurt her. I made no further attempt to get into "company," and thus, forced back upon myself, I began to form the habits of a student; and to aid me in my determination to study law, I decided to teach school. So, when I was almost grown—or, rather, about twenty-three years old, for I appeared to keep on growing—I went over into another neighborhood and took up a school. And they called me "Lazy Bill." I couldn't understand why, for I am sure that I attended to my duties, that I played town ball with the boys, that I even cut wood all day one Saturday; but confound them, they called me lazy. I spoke to one of the trustees; I called his attention to the fact that I worked hard, and he replied that the hardest working man he had ever seen was a lazy fellow who worked merely as a "blind." To sleep after the sun rises is a great crime in the country, and sometimes I sat up so late with my books that I had to be called twice for breakfast. And no amount of work could have offset this ignominy. I taught school during three years, and found at the end of that time that I was no nearer a lawyer's office. Once I called on an old judge, the leading lawyer in a neighboring village, and told him that if he would take me I would work for my clothes, and the humorous old rascal, surveying me, replied: "I have not contemplated the starting of a woolen mill. Why don't you go to work?" he asked. I told him that I was at work, that I taught school, but that I wanted to be a lawyer. He laughed and said that teaching school was not work—declared it to be the refuge of the lazy and the shiftless. I then ventured to remark that the South would continue to be backward as long as the educator was put down as a piece of worthless rubbish. I went away, and a few days later one of the trustees called on me and said that I had declared their children to be ignorant rubbish, and that therefore they wanted my services no longer. I returned home. My brothers were gone, and my parents were in feeble health. My father died within a year, and soon my mother followed him. The farm was poor and was mortgaged, and empty-handed I turned away. I heard that a school teacher was wanted up in North Carolina, near the Tennessee line, and I decided to apply for the place. I walked to the railway station, twenty miles distant. I have said that I went away empty-handed. I did not; I carried a trunk, light with clothes and heavy with books. I had put my trunk on the railway platform and was striding up and down when I saw two men, well-dressed, rich-looking, standing near. This amounted to nothing, and I would not mention it but for the fact that it was at this moment that I received my first encouragement. One of the men, speaking to his companion, remarked: "Devilish fine-looking fellow. I'd give a great deal to be in his shoes, to have his strength and his youth." I turned away, eager to hear more, yet afraid lest the other man might say something to spoil it all. But he did not. "Yes," he replied, "but he doesn't know how fortunate he is. Gad, he looks like an imported bull."
The train came and I was whirred away, over streams, below great hanging rocks; but I thought not of the grandeur of the rocks nor of the beauty of the streams, for through my mind was running the delicious music of the first compliment that had ever been paid me. And I realized that I had outgrown the age of my awkwardness, that strength was of itself a grace to be admired, that I should feel thankful rather than remember with bitterness the days of my humiliation. I observed a woman looking at me, and there was interest in her eyes, and I knew that she did not take kindly to me simply because she was an old and neglected girl, for she was handsome. Beside her sat a man, and I could see that he was eager to win her smile. He hated me, I could see that, but he couldn't laugh at me. I noticed that my hands and feet were not over large, and this was a sort of surprise, for I recalled hearing a boy say that my foot was the biggest thing he ever saw without a liver in it. I reached back and wiped out the past; I looked out at a radiant cloud hanging low in the west, and called it the future. Fool?
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