Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

48 RHYS LEWIS.
chapter before turning to something more important ; and after
that I shall bid him farewell for ever, unless, indeed, I am
compelled to give testimony against him in some day to come.
I trust, however, he will find forgiveness, even as I expect the
same.
The old Soldier's most important business was taking our
pence, and the next, in point of diversion, the breaking of a
good stout cane on our backs and hands every week or nine
days. This rough treatment was no secret to our parents ; but
they, in their ignorance, considered it necessary to our good.
,.We boys looked forward to our sharp discipline with the same
regularity, though not with the same appetite, that we did to our
meal time. As far as I can recollect, none of the boys, any
more than myself, cared the least bit for learning, while he, to
whom our instruction was entrusted, cared less. He seemed to
me, at all times, to derive greater pleasure from our failure to
say our lessons, than from our success, because it gave him au
excuse for our castigatiou. He expected us— if he expected at
all— to learn without help fi-om him. I often thought he felt
disappointed if we happened to master the lesson in spite of him.
He never attempted to create in us a love of knowledge and a
desire to excel ; on the contrary, what he did create was a dis-
like to every kind of learning, and an unnatural itching in every
lad for strength sufficient to thrash him in return, a pleasure
which, I am sure, every one promised himself, once he "became
a man." I remember well how, after a sore beating from
him, with fretful back and heavy heart, I would look at his
wooden leg and occupy my mind with guesses at the number of
Frenchmen he could have killed when fighting against Bony.
Jack Beck used to say he had heard it was three hundred.
Will Bryan put the figure much higher, adding that nothing
would give the old Soldier greater pleasure than to kill
the whole lot of us, and that he would do so too were he not
afraid that he would be hung for it— in which opinion we all
concurred. And it really needed no great effort to believe this ;
because of the diabolical rage depicted in his face when he waa
engaged correcting a boy— his jaw distending itself, the veins of
his forehead swelling and becoming black, and the whole
countenance horrible to look upon.