Read "The Fatal Boots" by William Makepeace Thackeray online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
After this, as you may fancy, I left this disgusting establishment, and / lived for some time along with pa and mamma at home. My education was / finished, at least mamma and I agreed that it was; and from boyhood / until hobbadyhoyhood (which I take to be about the sixteenth year of / the life of a young man, and may be likened to the month of April / when spring begins to bloom) -- from fourteen until seventeen, I say, I / remained at home, doing nothing -- for which I have ever since had a / great taste -- the idol of my mamma, who took part in all my quarrels with / father, and used regularly to rob the weekly expenses in order to find / me in pocket-money. Poor soul! many and many is the guinea I have had / from her in that way; and so she enabled me to cut a very pretty figure.
Papa was for having me at this time articled to a merchant, or put / to some profession; but mamma and I agreed that I was born to be a / gentleman and not a tradesman, and the army was the only place for me. / Everybody was a soldier in those times, for the French war had just / begun, and the whole country was swarming with militia regiments. "We'll / get him a commission in a marching regiment," said my father. "As we / have no money to purchase him up, he'll FIGHT his way, I make no doubt. " / And papa looked at me with a kind of air of contempt, as much as to say / he doubted whether I should be very eager for such a dangerous way of / bettering myself.