Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New Turk.
My brother Albert came to New York without the knowledge of father, and I got him a situation at the Harpers. I shall never forget how hard I besought John Harper to employ Albert, who did not want a boy, but kindly employed him to please me. Albert had the salt rheum, and also had very small and spiteful yellow bugs on the surface of his cranium. As I had to sleep with him, I combed his head every day, and when I found one of the little villains, I most cruelly tortured him with pins and flame, to terrify his brethren who remained, and to thwart his return to Albert’s head. But in spite of my bloody precaution, poor Albert’s skull teemed like Egypt of old, with ferocious animals, and I retired with him at night, invested with the fear of a culprit on his march to the scaffold. The yellow scamps made such a Napoleonic resistance, that I procured a finer comb, and in my violent efforts to drag out and exterminate the enemy, (who were deeply embedded and irresistibly fortified in his invulnerable skull,) poor Ally screamed, like an eagle on his cliff, and Mrs. Harper came to the basis of the attic stairs, and severely scolded us for quarrelling and fighting, as she supposed. Mrs. Harper was extremely nervous, and fearing she would learn that Albert had battalions of animalculæ in the region of his brain, and also trembling lest they would ground arms, and encamp and form tents in my luxuriant intellectual foliage, I advised Albert to return to Providence, and after long persuasion, with candy and peanuts, and peaches, he assented, and I went to Captain Bunker, Junior, who kindly consented to take him to Providence, without charge. While leaning on the railing of the steamer, with our eyes on the beautiful panorama of the bay, Captain Bunker told me that my lot was cast in a vicious city, and that I must resist evil temptation, and always be a good boy, and become a worthy man, and breathed other kind words into my ears, which soothed my lonely and inexperienced heart, made me cry vociferously, and I have always cherished him with the purest affection. Albert went to Providence with Captain Bunker, but instead of going to father’s, he proceeded to Boston with the money John Harper gave him, and thence to Eastport, Maine, where the yellow bugs increased so rapidly, that he was compelled to return to Providence, where father had his head shaved, which presented a bloody battle plain, full of teeming entrenchments, and his yellow foes so bewildered him, that the hospital nurses had to watch him closely, for several days, lest he would destroy himself.