That his country honesty was not altogether proof against the temptations of his life in the city is shown by a description he gives, in “Eyes and Ears,” of his successful attempt to purloin a six-pound cannon-ball from the Navy-Yard:
“One day I visited some ill-constructed vaults where shot had been stored. The six and twelve pound shot were extremely tempting. I had no particular use for them. I am to this day puzzled to know why I coveted them. There was no chance in the house to roll them, and as little in the street. For base-ball or shinty they were altogether too substantial. But I was seized with an irresistible desire to possess one. As I had been well brought up, of course the first objection arose on the score of stealing. But I disposed of that, with a patriotic facility that ought long before this to have sent me to Congress, by the plea that it was no sin to steal from the government. Next, how should I convey the shot from the Yard without detection? I tried it in my handkerchief. That was altogether too plain. I tried my jacket-pocket, but the sag and shape of that alarmed my fears. I tried my breeches-pocket, but the abrupt protuberance was worse than all. I had a good mind to be honest, since there was no feasible way of carrying it off. At length a thought struck me: Wrap a handkerchief about it and put it in your hat.
“The iron ball was accordingly swaddled with the handkerchief and mounted on my head, and the hat shut over it. I emerged from the vault a little less courageous than was pleasant, and began my march toward the gate. Every step seemed a mile. Every man I met looked unusually hard at me. The marines evidently were suspecting my hat. Some sailors, leering and rolling toward the ships, seemed to look me through. The perspiration stood all over my face as an officer came toward me. Now for it! I was to be arrested, put in prison, cat-o’-nine-tailed, or shot, for aught I knew. I wished the ball in the bottom of the sea; but no, it was on the top of my head!
“By this time, too, it had grown very heavy; I must have made a mistake in selecting! I meant a six-pounder, but I was sure it must have been a twelve-pounder, and before I got out of the Yard it weighed twenty-four pounds! I began to fear that the stiffness with which I carried my neck would excite suspicion, and so I tried to limber up a little, which had nearly ruined me, for the shot took a roll around my crown in a manner that liked to have brought me and my hat to the ground. Indeed, I felt like a loaded cannon, and every man and everything was like a spark trying to touch me off. The gate was a great way farther off than I had ever found it before; I seemed likely never to get there.
“And when at length, heartsore and headsore, with my scalp well rolled, I got to the gate, all my terror came to a culmination as the sentinel stopped his marching, drew himself up, and, looking through me, smiled. I expected him to say: ‘O you little thievish devil, do you think I do not see through you?’ But, bless his heart! he only said: ‘Pass!’ He did not say it twice. I walked a few steps farther, and then, having great faith in the bravery of my feet, I pulled my hat off before me, and, carrying it in that position, I whipped around the first corner and made for the bridge with a speed which Flora Temple would envy.
“When I reached home I had nothing to do with my shot. I did not dare show it in the house nor tell where I got it; and after one or two solitary rolls I gave it away on the same day to a Prince-Streeter.
“But, after all, that six-pounder rolled a good deal of sense into my skull. I think it was the last thing I ever stole (excepting a little matter of a heart now and then), and it gave me a notion of the folly of coveting more than you can enjoy, which has made my whole life happier. It was rather a severe mode of catechising, but ethics rubbed in with a six-pound shot are better than none at all.”
His student life, which had been such a failure heretofore, was improved a little, and but a little. By means of the pressure of school discipline, backed up and made formidable by family pride and the advice and exhortations heard at home, he managed to make fair progress in most of his studies, especially in the rules and exceptions of the Latin grammar, and to the day of his death was able to establish his claims to proficiency in that language by rattling off the list of eleven prepositions that govern the ablative. But his heart was not in the work. Disgust, insurrection, revolution, was the stormy way along which he was rapidly travelling.
This period in his own life is described in “Norwood”: “Long before the Amazon reaches the ocean it has grown so wide that from the channel no shore can be seen from either side. It is still a river, but with all the signs and symptoms of becoming an ocean. There is a period, beginning not far from fourteen, in young lives, when childhood is widened suddenly, and carries its banks so far out that manhood seems begun, though as yet it is far off. The stream is ocean-deep. Upon this estuary of youth the currents are shifting, the eddies are many. Here are united the strength of the sea and the hindrances of the land.
“The important organic changes which, in our zone, take place in the second full seven of years, produce important results even in the coldest temperaments and in the slenderest natures. But in persons of vigor of body and strength of feeling there is frequently an uprising like a city in insurrection. The young nature, swelling to the new influences with a sense of unmeasurable strength, sometimes turbulent with passions, but always throbbing with excited feelings led on and fed by tantalizing fancies, seems transformed from its previous self and becomes a new nature. New moral forces are developed into activity. Aspirations begin to quicken the soul. Ambitions grow nobler.”
Mrs. Stowe says: “The era of fermentation and development was upon him, and the melancholy that had brooded over his childhood waxed more turbulent and formidable. He grew gloomy and moody, restless and irritable. His father, noticing the change, got him on a course of biographical reading, hoping to divert his thoughts. He began to read naval histories, the lives of great sailors and commanders, the voyages of Captain Cook, the biography of Nelson; and immediately, like lightning flashing out of rolling clouds, came the determination not to rest any longer in Boston, learning terminations and prepositions, but to go forth to a life of enterprise. He made up his little bundle, walked the wharf and talked with sailors and captains, hovered irresolute on the verge of voyages, never quite able to grieve his father by a sudden departure. At last he wrote a letter announcing to a brother that he could and would no longer remain at school; that he had made up his mind for the sea; that if not permitted to go he should go without permission. This letter was designedly dropped where his father picked it up. Dr. Beecher put it in his pocket and said nothing for the moment, but the next day asked Henry to help him saw wood. Now, the wood-pile was the doctor’s favorite debating-ground, and Henry felt complimented by the invitation, as implying manly companionship.
“ ‘Let us see,’ said the doctor, ‘Henry, how old are you?’ ‘Almost fourteen!’ ‘Bless me! How boys do grow! Why, it’s almost time to be thinking what you are going to do. Have you ever thought?’ ‘Yes; I want to go to sea.’ ‘To sea! Of all things! Well, well! After all, why not? Of course you don’t want to be a common sailor. You want to get into the navy?’ ‘Yes, sir; that’s what I want.’ ‘But not merely as a common sailor, I suppose?’ ‘No, sir; I want to be a midshipman, and after that a commodore.’ ‘I see,’ said the doctor cheerfully. ‘Well, Henry, in order for that, you know, you must begin a course