glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a 
disposition and attitude -- either to seek or to possess, to 
reject or to avoid.  So it was that by frequently hearing words, 
in different phrases, I gradually identified the objects which the 
words stood for and, having formed my mouth to repeat these signs, 
I was thereby able to express my will.  Thus I exchanged with 
those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and 
advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life, 
depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the 
behest of my elders.

                          CHAPTER IX

     14.  O my God!  What miseries and mockeries did I then 
experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my 
teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in 
this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech which 
would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches!  To this 
end I was sent to school to get learning, the value of which I 
knew not -- wretch that I was.  Yet if I was slow to learn, I was 
flogged.  For this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers and 
many had passed before us in the same course, and thus had built 
up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were 
compelled to travel, multiplying labor and sorrow upon the sons of 
Adam.  About this time, O Lord, I observed men praying to thee, 
and I learned from them to conceive thee -- after my capacity for 
understanding as it was then -- to be some great Being, who, 
though not visible to our senses, was able to hear and help us.  
Thus as a boy I began to pray to thee, my Help and my Refuge, and, 
in calling on thee, broke the bands of my tongue.  Small as I was, 
I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be beaten at 
school.  And when thou didst not heed me -- for that would have 
been giving me over to my folly -- my elders and even my parents 
too, who wished me no ill, treated my stripes as a joke, though 
they were then a great and grievous ill to me.

     15.  Is there anyone, O Lord, with a spirit so great, who 
cleaves to thee with such steadfast affection (or is there even a 
kind of obtuseness that has the same effect) -- is there any man 
who, by cleaving devoutly to thee, is endowed with so great a 
courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and 
other torture weapons from which men throughout the world pray so 
fervently to be spared; and can they scorn those who so greatly 
fear these torments, just as my parents were amused at the 
torments with which our teachers punished us boys?  For we were no 
less afraid of our pains, nor did we beseech thee less to escape 
them.  Yet, even so, we were sinning by writing or reading or 
studying less than our assigned lessons.

     For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy 
will, I possessed enough for my age.  However, my mind was 
absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who 
were doing the same things themselves.  But the idling of our 
elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like 
it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the 
boys or the men.  For will any common sense observer agree that I 
was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball -- just because 
this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means 
of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games?  And did 
he by whom I was beaten do anything different?  When he was 
worsted in some small controversy with a fellow teacher, he was 
more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a 
playmate in the ball game.

                          CHAPTER X

     16.  And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, thou ruler and creator 
of all natural things -- but of sins only the ruler -- I sinned, O 
Lord my God, in acting against the precepts of my parents and of 
those teachers.  For this learning which they wished me to acquire 
-- no matter what their motives were -- I might have put to good 
account afterward.  I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a 
better way, but from a sheer love of play.  I loved the vanity of 
victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled with lying fables, 
which made them itch even more ardently, and a similar curiosity 
glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my 
elders.  Yet those who put on such shows are held in such high 
repute that almost all desire the same for their children.  They 
are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood 
games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire 
them to grow up to be able to give such shows.  Look down on these 
things with mercy, O Lord, and deliver us who now call upon thee; 
deliver those also who do not call upon thee, that they may call 
upon thee, and thou mayest deliver them.

                          CHAPTER XI

     17.  Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us 
through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit 
us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross, and 
was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who 
greatly trusted in thee.  Thou didst see, O Lord, how, once, while 
I was still a child, I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and 
was at the point of death -- thou didst see, O my God, for even 
then thou wast my keeper, with what agitation and with what faith 
I solicited from the piety of my mother and from thy Church (which 
is the mother of us all) the baptism of thy Christ, my Lord and my 
God.  The mother of my flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart 
pure in thy faith, she was always in deep travail for my eternal 
salvation.  If I had not quickly recovered, she would have