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as well as he could.
But one day, when the big bully knocked him down, without the slightest provocation, he exclaimed, in great wrath, ‘If you ever do that again, I'll kill you. Mind what I say. I tell you I'll kill you.’
Samson snapped his fingers and laughed, and the next day he knocked him down again.
Isaac armed himself with a heavy window-bar, and when the apprentices were summoned to breakfast, he laid wait behind a door, and levelled a blow at the tyrant, as he passed through.
He fell, without uttering a single cry. When the family sat down to breakfast, Mr. Tatem said, ‘Where is Samson?’
His nephew coolly replied, ‘I've killed him.’
‘Killed him!’
exclaimed the uncle.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I told him I would kill him if he ever knocked me down again,’ rejoined Isaac; ‘and I have killed him.’
They rushed out in the utmost consternation, and found the young man entirely senseless.
A physician was summoned, and for some time they feared he was really dead.
The means employed to restore him were at last successful; but it was long before he recovered from the effects of the blow.
When Isaac saw him so pale and helpless, a terrible remorse filled his soul.
He shuddered to think how nearly he had committed murder, in one rash moment
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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