I can only do so by telling the
story of how one sin led to another, until all culminated in that
fearful fraud, the pretense of death.
For the first year that I was at Blackrock school I strove with all
my strength to do and be what Dr. Brier and his kind, good wife
would wish. Their influence over me was kind and gentle and good. I
can never repay the debt of gratitude I owe them. But by degrees I
grew to hate the restraints of school, and I was drifting,
drifting, I knew not whither.
My best friends at school were Howard Pemberton and Martin
Venables. I loved them at the first with all the enthusiasm a boy
feels when he thinks he has found his ideal friends. They supplied
to me the lack of brothers; they were true, manly, high-minded
friends. But as soon as I began to drift away from the good I had
ceased to strive after, I loosened my hold on them.
It was about a year before I left Blackrock school when my aversion
to study and to all restraint became almost uncontrollable. During
my holidays I once fell in with a young man, James Williams, who
led a wild, reckless life. He had run away from home, had crossed
the seas, and had raised money in various ways, which enabled him
to indulge freely his wild fancies.
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