StoryTitle("caps", "An Idle Boy") ?>
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first it was an easy matter for me to get food at the
home of this lad, or of that, among my acquaintances,
sleeping wherever night overtook me; but, finally, when
mayhap three months had gone by, my welcome was worn
threadbare, and I was told by more than one, that a
hulking lad of ten years
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should have more pride than to
beg his way from door to door.
It is with shame I here set down the fact, that many weeks passed before I came to understand, in ever so slight a degree, what a milksop I must be, thus eating the bread of idleness when I should have won the right, by labor, to a livelihood in this world.
This last thought had just begun to take root in my heart when Nathaniel Peacock, whose mother had been a good friend of mine during a certain time after I was made an orphan, and I, heard that a remarkably brave soldier was in the city of London, making ready to go into the new world, with the intent to build there a town for the king.