Powers, parts and wholes : essays on the mereology of powers 1st edition christopher j. austin textb
Parts And Wholes
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Powers of Curriculum ebook: Sociological Perspectives on Education 1st Edition Brad Gobby
This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts–whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology.
Powers are often assumed to be atomic, and yet what they can do —and what can happen to them—is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first part of this book explores how powers divide; the second part, how powers compose. The final part showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology.
Powers,PartsandWholeswill be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic.
Christopher J. Austin is a postdoctoral research fellow in the ‘Mistakes in Living Systems: A New Conceptual Framework for the Study of Purpose in Biology’ project at Reading University. His specialization is in Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science. He is the
author of EssenceintheAgeofEvolution:ANewTheoryofNatural Kinds(Routledge, 2018).
Anna Marmodoro holds the Chair of Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University, and she is concomitantly an associate member of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Oxford. She specializes in two research areas: metaphysics and ancient, late antiquity and medieval philosophy. Her latest monograph is FormsandStructureinPlato’sMetaphysics (2021).
Andrea Roselli has been part of the Oxford-based Mereology of Potentiality research group for the last three years while being a postdoctoral research associate at Durham University. He specializes in metaphysics, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of time.
Routledge Studies in Metaphysics
Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature
The right of Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro, and Andrea Roselli to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademarknotice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-28856-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-28857-4 (pbk)
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003298830
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NotesonContributors
Introduction
Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro, and Andrea Roselli
Part I Parts of Powers
1 Carving Up the Network of Powers
A. J. Cotnoir
2 Parts and Grounds of Powers: A Logic and GroundTheoretic Mereology for Power Ontologies
Robert C. Koons
3 Complex Powers: Making Many One
Christopher J. Austin
4 Powers as Mereological Lawmakers
Michael Traynor
5 Determinable Dispositions
Nicky Kroll
Part II Composition of Powers
6 What There Is and What There Could Be: Mereology, Causality and Possibility in an Ontology of Powers
Sophie R. Allen
7 What Can Causal Powers Do for Interventionism?
The Problem of Logically Complex Causes
Vera Hoffmann-Kolss
8 Collective Powers
Xi-Yang Guo and Matthew Tugby
9 The Special Power-Composition Question and the Powerful Cosmos
Joaquim Giannotti
10 The Composition of Naïve Powers
Michele Paolini Paoletti
Part III Power Mereology in Science
11 Quantum Dispositions and the Simple Theory of Property Composition
Matteo Morganti
12 Dispositions, Mereology and Panpsychism: The Case for Phenomenal Properties
Simone Gozzano Index
Notes on Contributors
Sophie R. Allen is a lecturer in philosophy at Keele University and a supernumerary fellow in philosophy at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. She specializes in metaphysics, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind, taking a particular interest in metametaphysical and methodological questions. Within metaphysics, she primarily focuses on classification, causation, laws of nature and modality. She has written papers on the implications of properties being causal powers for theories of persistence, modality and possible worlds, the hard problem of consciousness and the conceivability argument. She is the author of ACriticalIntroduction toProperties(2016).
A. J. Cotnoir is a senior lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of St Andrews and a member of the Arché Philosophical Research Centre. He researches primarily in metaphysics and is especially interested in mereology, identity, individuation and unity. He is a co-author (with Achille C. Varzi) of the recent Mereologyand co-editor (with Donald L. M. Baxter) of the collection CompositionasIdentity. He enjoys applying formal systems from philosophical logic and the occasional foray into the philosophy of religion.
Joaquim Giannotti is a postdoctoral researcher and the principal investigator of the FONDECYT de Iniciación en Investigación project (No. 112200300) ‘Dual Aspect Essentialism: A Scientifically
Responsible Metaphysics of Fundamental Properties’ at the Universidad de Chile. He is also a research associate at the ERCfunded project (Grant No. 757295) ‘FraMEPhys: A Framework for Metaphysical Explanation in Physics’, based at the University of Birmingham. His work primarily focuses on metaphysical grounding and the ontology of powers. He has published papers exploring and defending non-orthodox views about topics in leading journals, including PhilosophicalStudiesand Synthese.
Simone Gozzano is a professor of philosophy of mind and metaphysics at the University of L’Aquila (Italy). He works on themes such as mind–body relation, mental causation and the metaphysical nature of phenomenal states. He is the author of four books (in Italian), co-editor (with Chris Hill) of NewPerspectivesonType Identityand (with Francesco Orilia) Tropes,Universals,andthe PhilosophyofMind. He has published a number of papers on scholarly journals.
Xi-Yang Guo presently teaches part-time in the Philosophy Department of Durham University, from which he received his PhD in 2017. His thesis covered the metaphysics of properties, facts, modality and meta-metaphysics. He was supervised by Sophie Gibb and Matthew Tugby with the support of an AHRC scholarship.
Vera Hoffmann-Kolss is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Bern. Her current research focusses on interventionist causation and Bayesian causal models. She is also interested in the metaphysics of properties, mental causation, and the recent debates on ontological vagueness and hyperintensionality.
She has published a number of papers on these topics and a book on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties.
Robert C. (“Rob”) Koons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and earned his MA from Oxford University and his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author or co-author of five books, including TheAtlasof Realitywith Timothy H. Pickavance (2017) and IsThomas’s AristotelianPhilosophyofNatureObsolete?(2022). He is the coeditor of four anthologies, including TheWaningofMaterialism (2010) and ClassicalTheism(Routledge 2023). He has been working recently on an Aristotelian interpretation of quantum theory and defending and articulating hylomorphism in contemporary terms.
Nicky Kroll is an associate professor and the chair of philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College. He works in the philosophy of language and metaphysics, focusing on the nature of potentiality and process and how they are encoded in natural language. His work appears in the OxfordStudiesinMetaphysics, Linguisticsand Philosophy, PhilosophicalStudies, Erkenntinis, NaturalLanguage Semanticsand others.
Matteo Morganti is a professor of philosophy at the University of Rome Tre, where he teaches courses in logic, reasoning, general philosophy of science, epistemology and the philosophy of physics. His research activity focuses on issues related to our knowledge of the physical world; in particular, he has written on the problem of scientific realism and on topics in the metaphysics of science, as well as on naturalism and the methodology of scientific metaphysics.
Besides several articles in international peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, he has authored CombiningScienceand Metaphysics(2013).
Michele Paolini Paoletti is an assistant professor at the University of Macerata (Italy). His main research interests cover metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. He has written extensively on the ontology of relations and powers, as well as on ontological emergence and dependence. His books include TheQuestfor Emergence(2017) and the collection PhilosophicalandScientific PerspectivesonDownwardCausation(Routledge, 2017, co-edited with Francesco Orilia).
Michael Traynor is presently an independent researcher focusing on metaphysics, specifically of persistence, parthood, the nature of time and identity, modality, powers and laws, often through a methodological and epistemological lens. He completed his PhD, ModalArguments,PossibleEvidenceandContingentMetaphysics, at St Andrews in 2017, under the supervision of Katherine Hawley and Aaron Cotnoir, during which time he was a member of the Arche Philosophical Research Centre. He has published articles in Thought, ProceedingsoftheAristotelianSocietyand Synthese.
Matthew Tugby is a professor of philosophy at Durham University. His research focuses on issues at the intersection of contemporary metaphysics and the philosophy of science, including the topics of properties, powers, laws, teleology, causation and modality. Matthew is the author of the 2022 monograph PuttingPropertiesFirst:A
PlatonicMetaphysicsforNaturalModality, which develops a metaphysics of science based on Platonic realism about properties.
Introduction
Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro, and Andrea Roselli
DOI: 10.4324/9781003298830-1
This collection of original essays addresses a new topic in the evergrowing literature regarding the metaphysics of powers1 – the mereologyofpowers: the part–whole relations existing withina powerand amongpowers. Given the centrality of powers in current scientific, as well as philosophical, thought, recognising and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers may prove crucial in developing powers ontologies. Powers are usually assumed to be simple, atomic entities, and yet they are often assumed to have complex manifestations. Consider, as an example from daily life, the disposition of a vase to break: it can manifest that ‘breaking’ in a number of ‘ways’, ways that differ both qualitatively and quantitatively (it can crack slowly, quickly splinter, explosively shatter, etc.). There are metaphysicians who hold that (some) powers in nature are ‘multi-track’, namely individuated by more than one type of stimulus/triggering condition and more than one type of manifestation, in contrast with the ‘single-track’ powers, which are individuated by one pair of stimulus/triggering conditions and type of manifestation. Introducing this distinction does not, however, address the research question that inspired this collection: multi-
track accounts, we submit, simply organise the complex manifestation of certain powers into ‘tracks’ but do not explain how this complex manifestation derives from the power. What is needed, we think, is an account of the internal complexity of such powers. Can we try to explain it in terms of partsofpower?
This volume offers fresh explorations of the hypothesis that there are parts–whole relations within a power (Part I) and among powers (Part II), as well as showcasing two examples of power mereology in the context of the philosophy of science (Part III).
In the first chapter, ‘Carving Up the Network of Powers’, Aaron Cotnoir shows how a systematic and thorough mereology of powers can be built, strengthened and defended. Cotnoir assumes an interconnected network of powers as the underlying metaphysical basis of the world and considers a number of ways of ‘carving up’ regions of that network. Each approach generates a unique, possible mereology of powers. In the case of the ‘subcollection method’, the mereology of powers considered is based on subsets and generates arbitrary complex powers, whereby every complex power is a region of the network. Cotnoir builds on these premises a mereology based on substructures and discusses some problems that might arise from this view. He then presents the ‘clustering method’, in which he focuses on the weakest points of connection in the network of powers – cutting across the fewest connections so that the network is partitioned into its most interrelated clusters. The author finally introduces the ‘coordination method’, which attempts to group nodes in a way that minimises multitracking, and a ‘bisimulation method’ borrowed from the computing sciences. Cotnoir’s conclusion is that
the carving approach to complex powers can be theoretically fruitful for different researchers with differing philosophical commitments.
In the second chapter, ‘Parts and Grounds of Powers’, Robert C. Koons develops a nominalist version of a powers theory in which the concept of ‘grounding’ (a form of constitutive determination that the author precisely defines in the chapter) lies at the base of a mereology of facts, whereby powers are equivalence classes of a sui generis, dispositional version of conditional facts that are said to be ‘power-equivalent’ when they are mereologically coincident. The author advances an extreme nominalist position: a version of power ontology in which powers and (neo-)Aristotelian forms are not reified and the ontology consists only of ordinary objects and their integral parts. Koons then shows how to defend this extreme nominalist position, one would be forced to adopt either pandispositionalism or the powerful quality theory so that powers can be identified with equivalence classes of concrete entities. Building on these conceptual grounds, Koons develops a fact-based mereology of powers in which powers can have other powers as their manifestation. The author then proceeds to describe a first model in which all causal powers are assumed to be mutually concordant –where, in other words, no entity has two powers with conflicting manifestations relative to the same conditions. He concludes by showing how we can include ‘free’ powers (free in the sense that they can fail to manifest on occasion) in this fact-based mereology.
The third contribution to this collection, ‘Complex Powers’ by Christopher J. Austin, is a metaphysical investigation of the possible characteristics and the conceptual requirements of a mereology of powers. In particular, the author argues that in order to develop a
mereology of powers as standardly intended in the current literature, we need to find a delicate balance between the metaphysics of emergence, wherein wholly unique and irreducible entities are created, and the fusion of properties, wherein the coming together of entities form a new, although not entirely novel, entity. Austin takes as his key study what he calls ‘complex powers’ – powers that have multiple stimuli and/or multiple manifestations, which he claims are, in fact, most of the normal, ‘everyday’ powers with which we are all familiar. His idea is to examine what sort of mereological relations might suffice in order to properly characterise the metaphysical constitution of such powers. After a first important part in which it is shown how conceptualising the complexity of powers in terms of part–whole can be promising and potentially problemsolving, Austin examines the conceptual minutiae involved in various possible mereological frameworks – touching on everything from emergence, top-down causation, and fusion. All these strategies, he claims, are unable to characterise complex powers sufficiently. While he does not offer a definitive account of the mereology of complex powers, the clear laying-out of the problem itself sets the ground for promising future work in the direction of a mereology of complex powers.
In the fourth chapter, ‘Powers as Mereological Lawmakers’, Michael Traynor explores an analogy between mereological principles and laws of nature, proposing a view according to which mereological principles are not ‘topic-neutral’, and therefore, the principles of a mereology of powers should have a suigenerisnature, given the novel field of application. The author develops a mereology tailored to power structuralism which includes the view that power
ontologies underlie object-metaphysics or process-metaphysics, supplying structures from which objects and processes are derived. Traynor argues that, in this context, a mereology of powers could help develop a novel conception of mereological laws, such that the latter are underwritten by powers, much as laws of nature are underwritten by powers in the dispositionalist tradition. In keeping with the Eleatic stance positing power as metaphysically fundamental, the opposed traditions of necessitarian and contengentist dispositionalism concerning natural laws then extend their claims to rule over the mereological realm – we may correspondingly take mereological laws to hold necessarily or contigently – each bringing with it associated strategies for dealing with supposed counter examples to one’s preferred set of mereological principles.
Finally, Nicky Kroll concludes the first part of the book, with his ‘Determinable Dispositions’, going in a different direction altogether with respect to the issue of the complex manifestation of some powers. The author argues that, just as desires can be non-specific (such as the desire to do something tonight, without wanting specifically to go to a pub, or to a concert, or to the theatre), dispositions can be non-specific, or ‘determinable’. The author argues for determinable dispositions, which are non-specific dispositions to manifest in some, non-determined way. Kroll favours an ontology of determinable dispositions because of its simplicity and (alleged) theoretical superiority over other competing theories, in, for example, explaining the nature of probabilistic dispositions (such as the disposition of a coin to land on one of its two sides) or multi-track dispositions (where fragility, for example, is a
determinable disposition to break) or dispositions in progress (an event in progress is disposed to bring about a resultant event at a certain, non-determinate point in time). The ontology Kroll proposes constitutes a novel framework for modelling the metaphysical complexities of dispositions which, in utilising the determinate–determinable relation, differs radically from the mereological approaches to composition that are explored elsewhere in this volume.
The second part of this book discusses whether and how powers can compose within and among themselves. In the first chapter, ‘What There Is and What There Could Be: Mereology, Causality and Possibility in an Ontology of Powers’, Sophie R. Allen thoroughly analyses different philosophical possibilities for a mereology of powers in connection with what she calls both ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ composition. In the case of direct composition, the part and the whole are instantiated by the same individual or are not instantiated. In the case of indirect composition, the part and the whole are instantiated by distinct individuals such that one individual is a proper part of another. Allen suggests that the most viable account of direct composition is one which ultimately focuses on the essentially (causally) productive nature of powers that determines what a power can do in the future. In support of this, the author argues that there are some important similarities in the context here laid out between the part–whole relations which hold between powers and those which hold between objects, events, and some abstract entities.
In the second contribution of this section, ‘What Can Causal Powers Do for Interventionism? The Problem of Logically Complex
Causes’, Vera Hoffmann-Kolss argues that interventionism and causal powers theories may be less distant from each other than is often assumed. Interventionists typically do not commit themselves to views about what causation really is, satisfied instead in elucidating how causal relations can be empirically discovered, described, and ultimately, manipulated. Causal powers theorists, on the contrary, typically aim to describe the metaphysical structure of causation that underpins the operations of the world. Hoffmann argues that interventionism, itself a successful enterprise, can benefit from incorporating considerations about causal powers. Interventionist theories of causation were originally designed to capture the way in which causal relations are discovered and described by practising scientists: if the data under investigation show certain patterns, these patterns can be given a causal interpretation. This approach is typically neutral about ontological questions. Hoffmann shows how interventionism plausibly needs at least some ‘metaphysical input’ in order to adequately represent the salient causal structures in the world and argues that interventionist theories could benefit from the metaphysical edifice which causal power theories provide.
The next chapter, ‘Collective Powers’ by Xi-Yang Guo and Matthew Tugby, deals with the problem of how a powers ontology can coherently incorporate both low-level powers (such as the charge of an electron) and high-level powers (such as the fragility of a glass). While it is usually considered desirable to have an ontology of ‘ground-level entities’, Guo and Tugby show how it is possible to preserve an ontological commitment to higher-level powers as plurally instantiated by simple substances and grounded by the lower-level powers. In doing so, the authors develop an interesting
vision of the part–whole relation in a dispositional context and give some compelling examples of its functioning in the context of a powers ontology. Guo and Tugby then offer an original way out of some long-standing problems regarding the instantiation of higherlevel powers with respect to causal exclusion. For example, they argue that the species of composition involved between higher- and lower-level powers is plural rather than mereological and that this makes higher-level powers readily defensible against causal exclusion concerns. Finally, they argue that the composition of higher-level powers places no further explanatory demands on those internal structures. While Hoffmann claimed that the powers of a single bearer are parts of one another, the authors here support a mereology of multiple-bearer powers (as opposed to single-bearer powers), where a power of an individual can be a part of a power of another individual, if the first individual is part of the second individual.
In the fourth contribution to this section of the book, ‘The SpecialPower Composition Question and the Powerful Cosmos’, Joaquim Giannotti presents and defends the existence of the ‘powerful cosmos’, composed by all the compossible powers instantiated. Giannotti presents this picture of the fundamental structure of the universe by re-examining the classic ‘special composition question’ in a dispositional context. He suggests that a ‘moderate’ answer, according to which powers compose objects when they form a physically united and metaphysically unified structure, is the most coherent option for a mereology built up from a powers ontology. The author, building on some considerations in the field of the philosophy of science, puts this moderate answer to the test in the
context of an ontology rooted in the powerful cosmos. He ultimately argues that the powerful cosmos is the best conceptual foundation for a power mereology by offering several metaphysical, empirical, and methodological upshots for embracing the view.
In the final essay in this group, ‘The Composition of Naïve Powers’ Michele Paolini Paoletti presents his version of the so-called naïve view of powers. According to the naïve view of powers, there is a one-to-one correspondence between powers, their bearers, their manifestations, and activations, on one hand, and causes, effects, and causal processes, on the other. The advantage of this view is that it makes it easy to single out powers and their features by taking into account which causal processes take place and the entities involved in them, as specific causal processes are accounted for by specific powers. However, the naïve view of powers seems to disallow the mereological composition of powers. In an effort to remedy this, Paolini Paoletti presents his own account of the composition of powers – one grounded in the distinction between component and derivative powers. An element that is particularly interesting in Paolini Paoletti’s piece (along with Koons’s) is that it considers cases in which pandispositionalism is not adopted, and the ontology can then include elements that are not powers –categorical properties, processes, and so on. This opens a whole new spectrum of possibilities: it might be held, for example, that a categorical property is part of a dispositional one or that a power is a part of the individual instantiating it (in a ‘powerful bundle theory’ fashion). While most of the contributions in this volume take a pandispositionalist perspective, these other compositional
possibilities are potentially fruitful hypotheses which offer promising directions for future work.
In the third and final part of this collection of essays, two philosophers of science showcase two different empirical explorations of power mereology. In his ‘Quantum Dispositions and the Simple Theory of Property Composition’, Matteo Morganti discusses the characteristic of some properties included in the best available description of microphysical reality and claims that these properties are dispositional in nature. He then proceeds to show how in entangled quantum systems there are composite physical systems whose properties are more than merely the sums of the properties of their parts. Morganti proposes to adopt a refined version of ‘metaphysical coherentism’, wherein certain groups of entities may ground or depend on themselves in the sense that each of them requires the existence of all the others to be what it is. In this sense, the plurality of all the entities is the full ground of each entity, and each entity partially grounds itself and each one of the others (in other words, a layered metaphysical structure that has a fundamental basis is rejected). Morganti then shows how this background would help make sense of dispositional composition in an empirical context. His arguments are, ultimately, in favour of a power mereology in a coherentist framework. In particular, he suggests that this model can capture a fundamental fact about the complex properties of quantum entangled systems, namely that there are modal connections between entities in which not only the simpler properties of the parts determine the more complex properties of the whole but the former are, in turn, also affected by the latter.
Finally, in the last chapter, ‘Dispositions, Mereology and Panpsychism’, Simone Gozzano conceptualises phenomenal properties, such as pain, in terms of mereologically complex powers. Gozzano considers proto-panpsychism: the view that fundamental entities have properties that are ‘precursors’ to consciousness and that they can collectively constitute consciousness in larger systems. For those familiar with the powers literature, this utilisation of the ‘Brentano thesis’ will be readily familiar. The author makes the case that this view is able to easily incorporate mereological composition within an ontology of dispositional properties. After offering a series of arguments that protophenomenal properties cannot be merely categorical in nature, Gozzano makes the interesting claim that dispositional properties standing in particular mereologically significant relations can be used to model the way in which consciousness both arises and persists.
Given the centrality of powers in the current metaphysical debate, recognising and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important. This book’s chief aim is to fill this important lacuna in our understanding of the metaphysics of powers. There are already, of course, important contributions to the development of new theories in both mereology and the metaphysics of powers. However, none of these focuses on the intersection between the metaphysics of powers andthe metaphysics of parts and wholes. We hope to have contributed with a step forward in this promising direction.
1. Although some philosophers prefer one term to the other for various conceptual reasons, we use powerand disposition interchangeably here.
Part I Parts of Powers
1 Carving Up the Network of Powers
A. J. Cotnoir
DOI: 10.4324/9781003298830-3
According to the Humean paradigm: ‘the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another’ (Lewis 1986 xi). There are no necessary connections between distinct entities, and so everything not related by identity (or mereology) is modally free. According to this picture, fundamental properties are categorical: they are perfectly natural intrinsic properties instantiated by spacetime points. Everything else is derivative of that. Dispositional properties or powers(e.g. fragility, solubility, electric charge, etc.) involve what an object does (which properties it manifests) in certain stimulus conditions and importantly what an object woulddo in various similar circumstances. That is, powers have modalconnections that help characterise them. A failure to reduce these modal connections (by a conditional analysis or similar) would disrupt the Humean picture.
One tradition in metaphysics seeks to develop theories of powers in an attempt to undermine Humeanism and build a rival comprehensive view of the world. Over time, that tradition has gained steam, and work in this area reached a fever pitch in the last
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fashionable during the middle ages. There are two other specimens of this sort of architecture still remaining at Bologna.
The crowd in the streets continued to increase every hour It was evident that the city already contained ten times as many guests as it could accommodate with lodgings. There was not a public house where a bed or even a dinner could be obtained. All round the city, in vacant spaces, were temporary erections of booths, tents, shanties and other hasty and imperfect structures, for the accommodation of the thousands and thousands who could find no better quarters. At night, the whole city was a blaze of lamps; every street being brilliantly illuminated. This exhibition is not performed as with us, merely by placing lights in the windows, but by such artificial and tasteful arrangement of them as adds greatly to the picturesqueness and magnificence of the scene. The two great streets bordering the river, and the three bridges crossing it, were lined with lofty scaffoldings, representing castles, towers, obelisks, and orders of architecture. These were hung with millions of lamps, and the whole exhibited a scene of dazzling and fairy magnificence, that reminded me of oriental splendor and the visions of enchantment. The crowd of spectators completely blocked up the streets, and it was impossible to move in any direction without great difficulty. All night long the streets were full, and the blaze of the illumination was kept up till the light of the lamps began to fade away in the brightness of the dawn.
In the immense numbers of those who thronged the city, few thought of a lodging for the night. Indeed, a lodging within doors, was out of the question with regard to the most of them—there were not houses to hold them. The greater part of these houseless guests were country people, who had travelled on foot from a distance, and began towards morning to feel the fatigues of their journey and sightseeing. Sleep overpowered them amidst the din and hurly-burly of the crowd, and they threw themselves by hundreds and by thousands on the steps of the doors, and on the pavements in nooks and corners, to sleep. The steps of the churches were black with heaps of men and women piled one upon another, fast asleep.
Fortunately, the night was most balmy and serene, and they were all too much accustomed to the open air to suffer by this exposure.
The festivities were kept up through the following day The river was covered with barges, galleys, boats, and small craft of every description, decked out with banners and streamers in the gayest and most fantastic manner. There were boat-races and other naval sports, which kept the river and the shores all alive with people through the day. For my part, I had seen sufficient of the crowd, confusion and tumult of these gayeties, and took more pleasure in strolling about the neighborhood. The fields are richly cultivated, and the soil naturally rich, till you approach the sea, where it becomes sandy and barren. Even here, however, I found, in the midst of a forest of oaks, a beautiful thriving farm belonging to the grand duke. It is true, there was not much cultivation, owing to the thinness of the soil; but there were immense herds of horned cattle, sheep and wild horses which roamed at large through the woods, and over the desert tracts along the shore, and, what surprised me most of all, about two hundred camels. These latter animals, I was told, were first brought to this region in the time of the crusades, and have been naturalized on the spot. They are used as beasts of burthen, and carry loads of wood to Pisa every day. It seems that all the camels which are carried about in caravans over Europe and America, are obtained here, where they may be bought for it hundred dollars apiece. Very probably, this breed, having been so long from its original territory, has degenerated, so that the genuine animal is never seen in our menageries. An attempt was made some years ago to introduce camels into Carolina and Georgia, where it was thought they might be of essential service in the low, sandy regions, but the animals dwindled away and died. The camel requires a dry air, and could not resist the moisture of our atmosphere.
A , who had heard of musical accompaniments, symphonies, &c., being one night at the theatre where the audience were calling upon the orchestra for their favorite tunes, determined to put in his claims; and standing up in the pit, he set the whole house
in a roar by calling out, “Hallo! you mess-mate with the big fiddle, give us Yankee Doodle with the trimmings.”
A the literary curiosities in the National Library at Berlin is the Bible used by Charles I. on the scaffold.
Farewell, for a time, to Correspondents.
A I am about to be absent for a few months, I must beg my correspondents to excuse me, if they do not see in the Museum a regular attention to their requests. For the present, however, let me say, that I have received the letter of B....., dated Boston, April 7; of M. A. R——l, North Bangor; of F., from Nantucket; of M. Hale, Homersville, N. Y.; of Julia’s brother Jo, Elm Cottage; of G. Q.; of W. N., of Boston; two letters from L. R. T., N. York; one from J. D. C., Yarmouth; one from E. M. H., Malden; one from S. C. Morse, Burlington, Vt.; one from W. B. C——, and some others.
I offer my thanks to Thomas L. S. for his suggestions. He refers to a conundrum on the 120th page of vol. II. of the Museum, which states that there is a chapter in the Bible of which it is impossible to read three verses without crying. He says it is the 117th Psalm, and my readers can see if he is right. The following story which Thomas tells is pleasing.
I was showing my little sister (three years old) the picture of Mt. Vesuvius, in your last “Museum,” and wishing to find her ideas on the subject, I asked her, “Is that mountain on fire?” “No,” said she. “What makes it smoke then?” said I. “Why,” said she, looking up into my face with a glance I cannot describe—“why, there is a stove in the mountain!”
The following letters tell their own tale; the first is from a very young subscriber.
Hartford, June 1st, 1842.
M . M :
I have been a reader of your Museum ever since it has been published, and I like it very much. I was quite pleased
with the stories of Brusque and the Siberian Sable-Hunter, and should like to see them continued. I was also interested in those stories of Peter Parley’s; and the puzzles have amused me much. I was glad to find so many in the June number.
I have found out three of them, and believe they are correct; the third is Peter Parley, the fifth Wooden Leg, and the sixth Robert Merry.
M F.
Newburgh, May 4th, 1842.
D M . M :
I take this opportunity of writing you a few lines, to let you know how I like your Museum. I have taken it for the last year, and I intend to take it as long as it is published, if nothing happens to prevent me. I long to see the rest of the Siberian Sable-Hunter, and Philip Brusque, and Peter Parley’s stories. If the little black and blue-eyed boys and girls only knew how interesting this little book is, they could not help subscribing for it. What boy or girl is there that cannot save one dollar a year? I have asked several of my friends to subscribe for it, and I hope that, before long, I can send some subscribers for Robert Merry’s Museum.
I remain your faithful subscriber, a blue-eyed friend,
T. S. McC.
M . M :
In answer to Bertha’s charade in your May number, I can do no less than send you the following, hoping you will notice it in your next, and oblige B.
Dear Bertha, if I don’t intrude, The truth that’s in your story
Is what you mean by “earthly good,” Likewise the “path to glory.”
The first is T, the end of Lot;
The second’s r,—you know it; That stands for rest, and every jot As plain as words can show it.
And if the end of malt be t, As I do now conceive it, It doubtless must the fourth one be— In truth, I do believe it.
The third is u, I do believe, In fact you’ll not deny it;
And if I do the right conceive, The fifth is h—let’s try it.
There is an h in spelling heaven, Likewise in spelling hell; Now, if I am not much mistaken, There’s one in spelling shell.
If now I make them all combined, Your anxious heart ’twill soothe— Likewise ’twill ease my weary mind, So let us call them TRUTH!
D M . M :
Lancaster, May 5th, 1842.
Permit me, although an unknown friend, to address a few lines to you concerning your interesting little Magazine. I have taken it for more than one year, and I must say, the more numbers I get of it, the better I like them. I hope you will not discontinue the story of Thomas Trotter’s Voyages and Travels very shortly, as it is, in my estimation, the most interesting story I ever read. Your Magazine has become very popular, and I hope it may continue and increase in popularity, as I am certain there is no one, that is more worthy of a liberal
M.
patronage than Robert Merry’s Museum. If you will be kind enough to insert in your next month’s Magazine the enigma that I have composed, (which you will find on the other side,) you will oblige your true friend, V .
ENIGMA.
I am a word composed of six letters.
My 4, 3, 4, 6 is what everybody was once.
My 4, 3, 2 is the name of a bird that flies all night.
My 4, 3, 5, 6 is an article used by merchants.
My 5, 3, 1, 2 is used by the shoemakers.
My 6, 6, 5 is an animal that inhabits rivers.
My 4, 3, 2, 2, 5, 6 is a thing that was done in the revolution.
My 3, 5, 6 is a pleasant beverage.
My 3, 2, 3, 5, 6 is what the little folks like.
My 1, 3, 5, 6 is a thing often done.
And my last, 4, 6, 3, 2, is what Paddy gave the drum. And my whole is in every town.
H. E. H. suggests Admiral Nelson, as a solution of the puzzle of thirteen letters in the May number of the Museum. He is right.
The following puzzles are among the great number sent for insertion.
I am a word of 16 letters.
My 1, 2, 7 is a witty fellow.
My 12, 9, 13, 5, 15, 7 is often applied to a wanderer.
My 13, 11, 12, 7, 14, 6, 5, 2 is one of the United States.
My 4, 2, 12, 12, 9, 1 is an agricultural instrument.
My 2, 12, 8, 5, 3, 2, 10 is a workman.
My 16, 14, 6 is a sort of snare.
My whole is the name of a distinguished American writer.
Yours respectfully,
I am a word of 13 letters.
My 10, 11, 2, 1 is the name of a furious animal.
My 9, 11, 10 is a liquid.
My 6, 2, 3, 12 is a very valuable product.
My 7, 6, 4, 9, 1 is a town of Massachusetts.
My 5, 13, 4 forms a part of a gentleman’s apparel.
My 13, 12, 4 is the name of a female.
My 8, 7, 4 is what my 6, 7, 4 very much desires.
My 12 and 9 is a word of refusal.
My 6, 2, 4 is a small house.
I am composed of 15 letters.
My 1, 2, 7, 6 is a medicine.
My 3, 6, 8 is a quadruped.
My 9, 13, 14, 5, 3 is an author.
My 13, 5, 2 is an herb.
My 1, 4, 7, 8 is a plant.
My 14, 9, 15 is a part of the foot.
My 2, 7, 8 is an insect.
My 6, 7, 11, 12 is a name.
My 13, 4, 7 is an ore.
My 10, 9, 7, 4, 6, 11 is a group of islands.
My 11, 10, 7, 5 is a number.
My whole is a celebrated queen.
M . M :
Charleston, S. C., June 4th, 1842.
Dear Sir,—Your Museum affords much amusement and instruction to your few subscribers here. I have made out the following answers to some of your puzzles, which it will be gratifying to me to know are correct.
Very respectfully, L .
To the third, of thirteen letters—Daniel Webster
To the seventh, of eleven letters—Robert Merry.
To the sixth, of nine letters—Wooden Leg.
To the fourth, of eleven letters—Peter Parley.
The above answers are right.
R. M.
O the death of King William IV., a council of Indians was held in Canada, where it was announced that they had no longer a “great father,” but a “great mother!”—meaning the queen.
M E R R Y ’ S
O all the senses, that of seeing is the most noble, commanding and useful. It enables us to perceive thousands of objects at a glance, with their forms, colors, and distance.
The mechanical structure of the eye is very curious, but I shall not describe it now. It is sufficient to say that light is the great instrument by which vision is performed. This is supposed to consist of innumerable particles, inconceivably small, which proceed in straight lines from every part of luminous or shining bodies. These fly with a velocity ten million times as swift as a cannon ball, for they come from the sun to the earth in eight minutes!
These rays of light enter the ball of the eye at the pupil; and at the bottom of a cavity in the ball, called the retina, a little picture is painted of every object placed before the eye. It is this little picture that enables us to see; and we see distinctly, or otherwise, as this is clear or obscure. A very curious thing is, that this picture paints everything reversed, that is, upside down. The reason why we do not, therefore, see things upside down, is a matter that has puzzled greater philosophers than Bob Merry.
Merry’s Adventures.
.
T book shop in which I was now a clerk, was not like the present Broadway establishments of Appleton, or Wiley & Putnam— a vast hall, with almost endless successions of shelves, and these loaded with the rich and varied volumes of the American and English press. No indeed! it was a little shop in Pearl street, stocked with Webster’s Spelling Books, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, Young’s Night Thoughts, Webster’s Third Part, the American Preceptor, and other works of a popular kind, and designed for general use. There were no Rollo works—there was no Peter Parley then!
Mr. Cooke was a very sharp man in trade. His whole soul was bent on making money. He cared nothing for books, except for the profit he made upon them. For a few days he left me to myself, but then he began to try to make me as much interested in the business as he was. But this was a vain attempt. My thoughts were always somewhere else, and often when he spoke to me I did not hear him. I was constantly making blunders. In casting accounts I got everything wrong; I credited Mr. Lightfoot with books that should have been charged; I sent off to a customer a lot of Peregrine Pickle, instead of Young’s Night Thoughts; and at last, taking the inkstand for the sand-box, I dashed a puddle of ink over the ledger!
This was the crisis of my fate. Never in all my days have I seen such another sight as poor Mr. Cooke’s face. Astonishment, indignation, fury, were in his countenance all at once. At last he broke out: “What have you done? Oh you unlucky dog! Get out of my house; get out of my sight! Oh my poor, dear ledger! Here’s a pretty kettle of fish! Get out of my sight! Get a piece of newspaper; fetch some water; run to the house and get a cloth! Oh dear, dear, dear!
what shall I do! Oh Robert Merry—Robert Merry!” Here the poor man was entirely out of breath. I got the things he wanted, took my hat and walked into the street.
I passed along quite rapidly for some time, hardly knowing what I was about. In the tempest of my mind I walked rapidly, and was soon in a remote part of the city. The time passed insensibly away, and it was evening before I was aware of it. As I was walking through a dark and narrow street, I heard a voice behind me, and a clatter as of many persons running with all their might. The din drew nearer and nearer, and soon I distinguished the cry of “Stop thief! stop thief!” In a moment a young man rushed by me, and at a little distance several men came pressing in hot pursuit. I was seized with a sudden impulse, whether of fright, I cannot say, but I ran with all my speed. I was, however, soon overtaken, and rudely seized by the collar by a man, who exclaimed, “Well, rascal, I have got you at last!”
“Let go of me,” said I, “I am no rascal.”
“Nay, nay,” said the other; “not so soon, my boy!” at the same time he twisted my collar, till I was well-nigh choked. Two other men came up, and each had some rude thing to say to me.
“Well, master Scrapegrace,” said one, “I guess you have seen Bridewell; so it will be as good as home to you.”
“It’s the very fellow I saw prowling about the streets last night,” said another: “his hang-dog look is enough to commit him.”
“Really,” said a third, “there’s a touch of the gentleman about the fellow; but there’s no rogue so bad as one that’s seen better days, and had a neddicashun.”
With this kind of conversation they amused themselves, while they pulled me rudely along, and at last lodged me in a watch-house. Here I was kept till morning, when I was taken to a prison called Bridewell, where were some fifty persons, of all ages and sexes, and wearing the various aspects of poverty, wretchedness, and crime. I could not endure to face them, so I slunk into a corner and sat down upon the floor. Burying my face in my hands, I gave myself up to despair
I sat for two or three hours in utter desolation, thinking over my sad fortunes, and cut to the heart with a sense of the evils that surrounded me. At length a man came and told me that I was wanted. I followed him out, and was taken into a room full of people. I had never been in a court of justice before, and I certainly did not guess that this was a place that could bear such a title. I have seen a good deal of the world, and yet I am ready to declare that in no place, not even in the wilderness, among savages, is there a spot where men seem to me so rude, so ill-mannered, so unjust, so little humane, as in that place called a court of justice The constable, the sheriff, the judge, and, above all, the lawyers, have the same heartlessness, the same disregard of the claims of one human being upon another.
I was hurried through the crowd, and placed in an elevated seat, surrounded with a railing, thus becoming the object upon which every eye was bent. The sense of my degradation, innocent as I was, overwhelmed me with confusion. One of the lawyers, called the city attorney, soon got up and stated to a sour and awful looking man, who it appeared was the judge, that the times were marked with fearful signs. “May it please your honor,” said he, “the good old days of purity are past; no longer are the young brought up in the way in which they should go, but they are either instructed to ridicule every law of God and man, or left to work out their own destruction. It is a time for justice to do her work; for the judge to assert the majesty of the insulted law. I now bring before you, sir, a young man of genteel appearance; one who has evidently seen and known better things; but who yet, we have reason to believe, is a hardened and practised villain.”
Having said this, the lawyer went on to state, that I entered a store the evening of the preceding day, and robbed the till or drawer of its money, amounting to several dollars; that I was soon pursued, and, while running, threw away the money; that I was speedily overtaken, lodged in the watch-house for the night, and then put in Bridewell. Here several witnesses were called, who testified to these facts. One of them, who had accompanied me to the watch-house, added, that he knew me perfectly well; that I was a thief and gambler
by profession; that he had seen me some days before, at a little tavern, notorious as a gambling house, and that he had seen me playing at cards with two celebrated rogues. This he embellished with sundry particulars as to my looks and actions.
I was so unpractised in the ways of the world, so ignorant, and so utterly confounded at the strange events that came hurrying one after another, that I sat still, and heard all this with a kind of stupid wonder. I did not attempt to explain or deny anything. It all looked to me like a conspiracy—the countenance of judge, lawyer, and witness, bore an aspect coinciding with this idea, and I felt it to be in vain to resist. Though the whole story, save only the gambling scene, and my being taken in the street, was false, yet I said nothing, and my silence was taken as admission of my crime.
This examination was followed by a speech on the part of the lawyer, who evidently wished to have me convicted. I could not imagine why this man, whom I had never seen before, whom I never injured or offended, should be so anxious to prove me a thief, and to have me shut up in prison. I did not then know that a lawyer always wishes to succeed in any case he undertakes, right or wrong, because he is thought a better lawyer if he is able to succeed. I did not then know that if a lawyer has a bad case, he is particularly anxious to gain it, and makes all the greater efforts because he thereby shows his ingenuity and his art, and thus increases his reputation and gains practice.
Well, the lawyer went on pleading very artfully, pretending all the time to be candid, and to pity me; but yet exaggerating the testimony, and making me out one of the blackest villains that ever lived. He was so eloquent and so artful, that I almost began to think that I was really a regular thief! I expected of course to be condemned, and was not disappointed when the judge sentenced me to three months’ imprisonment in the city jail.
To this place I was taken the next day, and there shut up with about a hundred other convicts; thus becoming the regular companion of criminals; and denied the liberty of going forth to breathe the pure air, or to associate with my fellow-men, because I
was considered a dangerous person! At the time, this all seemed to me not only cruel and unjust, but unaccountable. I have since been able to see that it proceeded from weakness of character on my part, owing to my faulty education. My playing at cards at the tavern; my inattentive negligence at the bookstore; my want of all habits of taking care of myself, had thus led me on from one step to another, till I was now an outcast from society and the world. I had been brought up to think myself rich; this was the first great evil. I had never had that constant admonition which parents bestow, and which, though children often resist and reject it, is the greatest good that Providence can send to young persons. It was owing to these defects in my education, that I had grown up in ignorance and imbecility; and now that I was left to take care of myself, I found that I was incompetent to the task. Having committed no serious fault, and utterly innocent of all crime, I was still a convicted felon. Let this part of my story teach children to prize the advantages of a good education; to prize the admonitions of parents; and to prize the protection and guidance of father and mother, when danger and difficulty gather around the path of youthful life.
I saw no one with whom I had the least desire to form an acquaintance, and therefore kept aloof from all around me. Food was brought in, but I had lost all appetite, and could not eat. A bed was assigned me in a long room, where were about twenty other beds. It was a mere mattrass of straw upon the floor; and though not inviting, at an early hour I retired and lay down upon it. I was revolving my own fate in my mind, when someone in the bed next to me, spoke. I looked up, and by the dim light, I saw there a young man, thin and pale, and apparently unable to rise. “Get me some water! for God’s sake get me some water!” said he. The tones were husky, but earnest, and I sprung up instantly. “Who are you?” said I.
“Oh, never mind who I am, but get me some water,” was the reply.
I went instantly, and procured some water and brought it to the bed-side. The young man raised himself with great difficulty. He was wasted to a skeleton; his hair was long and nearly covered his face. His eye was deep blue, and large, and the expression was exceedingly soft, though now very bright. He took a long draught of
the water, and then sunk heavily upon the bed, saying, as if it was all he had strength to say, “Thank you!”
This scene interested me, and called my thoughts away from myself. I sat by the side of the young man, looking intently upon his pale face. In a short time he opened his eyes, and saw me looking at him. He started a little, and then said—“What do you look at me so for?” “I hardly know,” said I, “except that you are sick. Can I aid you —can I do anything for you?”
“No—no,” replied he: “no—and yet you can. Come near; I am very feeble and cannot talk loud. What brought you here? You do not talk like one of us?” I here told the young man my story, very briefly. At first he seemed to doubt my veracity—but he soon dismissed his suspicions, and went on as follows:
“You think that your misfortunes are the result of an imperfect education, and the want of the care, teaching, and protection of parents. My story will show you that all these advantages may be thrown away, if the heart is wrong. My story will tell you the dangers that lie in the first fault!
“My parents were respectable and religious people. They took great pains with my education, for I was their only child. They not only sent me to school, and provided me with good books, but they gave me good advice, required me to go to church, and took care that I should not fall into evil company It was impossible not to love such parents, and therefore I entertained for them the strongest affection. I also placed the most perfect confidence in them: I told them all my wishes, and if reasonable, they were granted; I told them my troubles, and then was sure to receive sympathy, and, if possible, relief.
“But this happy state of things did not continue. One of my companions had a watch, which he wished to sell for ten dollars. It was very pretty, and I desired exceedingly to possess it. I asked my father for ten dollars to buy it; but he thought it an idle expense, and refused. I then went to my mother, and tried to get her to persuade my father to buy the watch for me; but this was unavailing.
“About this time, I saw a ten dollar bill, lying, as if left by some accident, in one of my father’s desk drawers. The thought of taking it, came suddenly into my mind. I took it and put it into my pocket, and went away. It was the first thing of the kind I had ever done, but a first step in guilt once taken, others soon become matters of course. I had no great fear of detection, for I believed that the bill would not be missed, and if it were, no one was likely to suspect me of taking it. The money was soon missed, however, and some inquiry was made about it. I was asked if I had seen it: to which I answered, ‘No!’ This lie, the first I had ever told, was the direct consequence of my first fault.
“The loss of the money passed by; nothing more was said of it for some time. After waiting a few days, I took the bill and purchased the watch of my young friend, telling him to say that he had given it to me, if any inquiry was made about it. I then took it home and told my mother that John Staples had given me the watch. Thus I went on, not only telling falsehoods myself, but also leading my companion into falsehood: so sure it is that one crime leads to another.
“My mother seemed very thoughtful when I showed her the watch; and pretty soon after, my father called me to him, and began to inquire about it. He was evidently a little suspicious that I had come by it unfairly, and suspected that, somehow or other, the affair was connected with the lost ten dollar bill. I parried all his enquiries; denied plumply and roundly all knowledge of the missing money; and at last, with tears and a look of honest indignation, protested my innocence.
“From this time, my feelings towards my parents began to alter, and especially towards my father. I could not bear to see him look at me. Ever before, I had loved his look, as if it were summer’s sunshine; but now it seemed to me to be full of suspicion and reproach. I felt as if his eye penetrated into my very bosom; and it stung me with remorse. My confidence in him was gone; my affection flown; I even disliked to be in his presence, and I was constantly devising the means of cheating and deceiving him!
“So things went on for two or three weeks, when at last my father called me to his study, and I saw by his look that something serious was coming. He proceeded at once to tell me that a shopkeeper in the village, in paying him some money, had given, among other bills, the lost ten dollar note! He added further, that, on inquiry, he found that it had been received of John Staples. My father’s inference was, that I had taken the money, and bought the watch with it, and had resorted to a series of falsehoods to cover up my guilt. Short as had been my apprenticeship in crime, I met this charge with steadiness; and still protested my innocence, and insinuated that suspicion ought rather to fall upon Staples, than upon myself.
“Upon this hint, my father sent for John, who, true to his promise, said that he had given me the watch. When asked about the money, he denied all knowledge of it. My father told him of getting the identical bill he had lost, at the merchant’s store; he took it out of his pocket, and deliberately showed it to Staples. The fellow seemed to feel that he was caught; that further evasion was vain. The truth trembled upon his lips, but before he spoke, he looked at me. I gave him such a frown as to decide his course. He instantly changed his mind, and resolutely denied ever having seen the money before!
“This was decisive: Staples was proved a liar, and it was readily inferred that he was also a thief. The matter was told to his father, who paid the ten dollars in order to hush the matter up. Thus the affair seemed to end, and my first enterprise in guilt was successful. But alas, there is no end to crime! and our success in error is but success in misery. I had obtained the watch—but at what a cost! It had made me a liar; it had deprived me of that love of my parents which had been my greatest source of happiness; it had made me dread even the look and presence of my kind father; it had led me, in order to save myself, to sacrifice my friend and companion; and, finally, it had made me look upon all these things with satisfaction and relief, because they had been connected with my escape from detection and punishment. Thus it is that we learn not only to practise wickedness, but to love it!
“From this time, my course in the downward path was steady and rapid. I formed acquaintance with the vicious, and learned to prefer
their society I soon became wholly weaned from my parents, and felt their society to be an irksome restraint, rather than a pleasure. From regarding my father as an object of affection, I learned now to look upon him with aversion. When he came into my presence, or I into his, his image produced a painful emotion in my mind. Thus I got at length to feel toward him something like hatred. I spent a great deal of money for him, and kept constantly asking for more. I knew that he was in straightened circumstances, and that he could ill afford to supply me—but this did not weigh a feather in my hardened mind.
“I went on from one step to another, till at last I agreed to unite with my companions in a regular system of roguery. We formed a kind of society, and robbed hen-roosts and melon-patches by the score. We obtained entrance to houses and stores, and plundered them of many watches and silver spoons. I was the youngest of the party, and did not always take a very active part in their enterprises —but I loved the sport and did what I could. At last, as we were returning from an excursion one very dark night—there being four of us—we heard a horse’s trot behind us. We waited a little, and soon a gentleman, well mounted, came up. In an instant two of the gang rushed upon him; one seized the horse’s bridle, and the other pulled the man to the ground. We all fell upon him and began to rifle his pockets. He made some resistance, and I was about to strike him on the head—when, think of my horror!—I perceived that it was my father! I staggered back and fell senseless upon the ground. No one saw me, and how long I remained insensible, I cannot say
“When I came to myself, I was alone. My companions had gone away, not noticing me, and my father, after being rifled of his watch and money, had escaped. What should I do? I could not return home; the thought of meeting the parent, in whose robbery I had been an abettor, and against whose life I had prepared to strike a ruffian blow—was too horrible! I fled to this city—I allied myself to rogues and scoundrels. I lived a life of crime; for nothing else was left to me. I drank deeply; for drunkenness is necessary to one who pursues a life of vice and crime. The mind gets full of horrors at last, and brandy only can allay them; beside, brandy is often necessary to
