Chapter XXIX
A Pirate from Boyhood
About the beginning of the eighteenth century there lived in
Westminster, England, a boy who very early in life made a choice of a
future career. Nearly all boys have ideas upon this subject, and while
some think they would like to be presidents or generals of armies,
others fancy that they would prefer to be explorers of unknown countries
or to keep candy shops. But it generally happens that these youthful
ideas are never carried out, and that the boy who would wish to sell
candy because he likes to eat it, becomes a farmer on the western
prairie, where confectionery is never seen, and the would-be general
determines to study for the ministry.
But Edward Low, the boy under consideration, was a different sort of a
fellow. The life of a robber suited his youthful fancy, and he not only
adopted it at a very early age, but he stuck to it until the end of his
life. He was much stronger and bolder than the youngsters with whom he
associated, and he soon became known among them as a regular land
pirate. If a boy possessed anything which Ned Low desired, whether it
happened to be an apple, a nut, or a farthing, the young robber gave
chase to him, and treated him as a pirate treats a merchant vessel which
he has boarded.
Not only did young Low resemble a pirate in his dishonest methods, but
he also resembled one in his meanness and cruelty; if one of his victims
was supposed by him to have hidden any of the treasures which his captor
believed him to possess, Low would inflict upon him every form of
punishment which the ingenuity of a bad boy could devise, in order to
compel him to confess where he had concealed the half-penny which had
been given to him for holding a horse, or the ball with which he had
been seen playing.
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