[14] expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing boy, as his father doubtless was before him. ‘It was my delight,’ says he, ‘to be taken captive by the Devil. I had few equals, both for cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming.’ Yet, in his ignorance and darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of conscience. He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and apparitions of devils. Troubled with fears of eternal fire, and the malignant demons who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he often wished either that there was no hell, or that he had been born a devil himself, that he might be a tormentor rather than one of the tormented. At an early age he appears to have married. His wife was as poor as himself, for he tells us that they had not so much as a dish or spoon between them; but she brought with her two books on religious subjects, the reading of which seems to have had no slight degree of influence on his mind. He went to church regularly, adored the priest and all things pertaining to his office, being, as he says, ‘overrun with superstition.’ On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach of the Sabbath by sports or labor, which struck him at the moment as especially designed for himself; but by the time he had finished his dinner he was prepared to ‘shake it out of his mind, and return to his sports and gaming.’ ‘But the same day,’ he continues,
as I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to
