Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II EARLY RECOLLECTIONS Narrow escapes?Efforts of memory? Wages, not punishment ? Keeping the peace?Innocent arson?Father Delany? A New Departure in Catholic Education ?A question of honour? Our Bill ?
Barred out. THERE is a strong temptation to set down here something of the thoughts, feelings, incidents and enjoyment of my young days. Looking back as one looks from a distance on a valley on which the sunshine is smiling, those days of one’s youth are so vivid, so real, that one is apt to forget how little interest they have for outsiders. Besides, I am pledged to brevity. I am writing not as an actor, but as a spectator; I am telling of things seen and heard, and I will compress the days of my youth into as few pages as possible. When I was just two years old, so I have been told, I was industriously engaged in humble imitation of the gardener sowing seed on the broad flags in front of our house in Tuam, in confident hope of an abundant harvest. I went over the verge, tumbled down a flight of stone steps and gashed my temple on a sharp angle at the bottom. The whole incident is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday. I vividly remember my mother sitting with me in her lap, holding the wound together while the servant scoured the town for my father. Then darkness closed round me, and I remember nothing else for years. A deep dinge over my eyebrow’ remains as a memento of the incident. Just such another accident may be mentioned, though a little out of its order. I wonder how many reckless boys have had a similar experience ! It chanced when I wasabout ten years old my father one day brought home a revolver, a queer, stumpy, old-fashioned thing quite unlike the modern weapon. There were six barrels all the same length revolving on a pivot, and…
