BRANCH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.

Life of Stephen H. Branch.

Mortals who write their lives are shy
Of crimes that wound and make them sigh;
But I’ll disclose my evil deeds,
Although my heart in sorrow bleeds.

I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, July 11, 1813, and am the second son of Stephen and Lucretia Branch. My mother was my father’s second wife. My father had four wives, the last of whom survives.

Historians are liars, and gild distinguished villains, whose political, religious, and military views harmonize with their own. Autobiographers are liars, and boast of virtues they never possessed, and conceal vices they always cultivated. I shall divulge the whole story of my funny and mournful career. I shall meander life’s comic and dismal stream, from the earliest recollections of childhood to the present hour, and moisten my manuscript with tears of mirth and sadness, as my capers and errors emerge from the mysterious realms of memory. As I advance, the retrospect of my freaks and follies may appal, but it shall not deter me from its proclamation to the present and coming generations. I desire to record my frivolities and foibles, that youth and age may avoid them as alligators, (with hideous jaws distended,) in hot pursuit of their affrighted victims up the embankments of the Chagres, and into the tallest trees.

I did not inherit my peccadilloes, as I cannot discover a notorious sinner among my ancestors for nearly two centuries. My father was one of the purest men I ever knew, and his deeds are inscribed on the archives of Rhode Island, in letters that can never be effaced. Although the minds of my parents had a beautiful symmetry, yet I can trace my eccentricity to their parents, who were as strange as Diogenes in his tub, or Zantippe in the streets of Athens torturing poor Socrates.

Mrs. Grey was my first school-marm, and Mr. Hill my first school-master, followed by Miss Latham, Mr. Shaw, Pettis, Osborne, Record, Hammond, Gregg and Ainsworth, all of whom I terribly tormented. Although my mother died before I was seven years old, yet I remember the trouble I gave her, and how I cried when the messenger came to the school-house, and told me of her sudden death, and how my father and aunt Lucy wept on my arrival home. My father’s third wife was my first step-mother, and although she was very kind, yet there was a melancholy vacuum in my home, and at eight years old, I sought diversion at the circus and theatre, and resolved to be a circus-rider, and ground and lofty tumbler. But a fall from my horse while standing on one leg, and serious bruises while striving to turn summersets, disgusted me with the circus, and I determined to be an actor, and carried the wardrobes of the actors to and from the theatre, for which I was admitted free. But my father heard of it, and told me not to visit the theatre again. But I went, and he gently whipped me. On the next night, brother Albert accompanied me to the theatre, and while I was wildly screaming at the Dromios, father entered the pit and seized me, amid the convulsions of the audience and actors. On arriving home, he took us down cellar, and began to rope Albert, who instantly bellowed: “O, my salt rheum! O, spare my salt rheum!” Father then grabbed me, and I cried: “O, my boils! O, spare my boils!” when he roped me in a fresh spot, and did not cease until he gave me my own chastisement and Albert’s too, and I never let Ally go with me to the theatre again, as my own licking was about as much as I could endure. But I derided father’s castigation, and the following night, I retired at nine o’clock to my bed-room, in the second story, and tied a rope to the bed-post, and, at the peril of my life, descended the house fronting the yard, and went to the theatre, and about midnight ascended the house, and hauled in the rope, and went to bed. In about a week, John Horsewell got locked out, and I invited him to ascend the rope and sleep with me, to which he readily assented. In the morning, I did not rise at my usual hour, and father came to ascertain the cause, when he heard John Horsewell snoring like thunder under my bed. He looked, and discovered John, and grabbed him by the hair, and spanked him most awfully, and while spanking poor John, I jumped from the bed, and seized my clothes, and ran down stairs, and did not stop until I got into the barn, where I dressed myself, and went to school without my breakfast. After school, I prowled around the house until father left for his place of business, and then went into the house and ate my dinner. I took an early tea and went to bed; but father soon came home, and into my bed-room and severely spanked me, and struck me several times with the very rope with which I had descended and ascended the house, muttering something about one Haman of old, while he roped me. I then exchanged a top for a fishing-line, and told my brother William, that if he would tie one end of the line to his little toe, and throw the other out of the window, so that I could pull it and arouse him from his midnight slumber, to softly unlock the door and let me in after the theatrical performance, that I would let him tie the fishing-line to my little toe on alternate nights while he went to the theatre. This plot was successful for about two weeks, when some boys on their return from night-school, came into our yard to get some water from our well. After one of the boys had enjoyed a delicious draught of water from our bucket, his keen eyes rested on the plummet at the end of the fishing-line, which he seized, and began to pull without success, when he jerked it so hard, as to snap the line, with cries of fire and murder in the second story. Himself and little comrades seized their scholastic lanterns, and scampered for their lives. One of them was caught by a faithful watchman and brought into our yard, when my father escorted them up stairs, where brother William was weltering in blood that flowed from his toe and nose, and from bruises he received while running and tumbling over chairs and tables, and other bed-room utensils, when the boy gave his last terrible jerk of the fish-line. The boy and watchman now departed, and father put salve on William’s toe, and checked the copious effusion of blood from his nose, and bathed his wounds with water and apple-jack, and put him to bed with a solitary but tremendous spank, with a promise of more when his dislocated toe was set and healed. Father then took his ambush position in the yard, and awaited my arrival from the theatre. I softly opened and closed the gate, and while feeling for the plummit, he suddenly grabbed me, and nearly scared me into the eternal world. He then led me into the barn, and illuminated the stable lantern, and took off my pants, and spanked me with the curry-comb until the blood spurted in his face, and the horse snorted and kicked him so hard that he had to arouse and send brother Albert for a surgeon to dress the fearful wound. I always blessed the humane and intelligent old horse for kicking father, and thus saving my blood and bones, and I so intensely loved the noble animal, that I stole father’s oats, and fed him until he got so fat that I dared not give him more lest his belly would explode, and the oats fall out, and my theft be discovered. After my last trouncing, I became disgusted with the theatre, and resolved to go no more to witness such nonsense. Soon afterwards, I told John Horsewell that for a dozen marbles, I would give him some of my father’s corn, that would parch as white as snow, and as round as hail,

And would pop as high
As the pretty sky.

John assented, and we went up stairs to the attic, where father kept his corn. John brought his father’s rainy hat, so that he could get much corn, and while I