Citizen Tom Paine Read Online Free PDF Page A

homespun, with his face shaven and his hair powdered and his nails clean. Aitken gave him dinner, and then they sat down and talked. The bookseller was an extraordinary man, not brilliant, but filled with a detailed material knowledge about the colonies. He told Paine, frankly “I have faith in ye because you come cheap. That’s the Scotsman in me, and maybe the fool.”
    They talked all evening, and by midnight, the Pennsylvania Magazine was born. That night, Paine stayed over at Aitken’s house, not sleeping, but lying on his back and staring into the darkness.

3
    THE RAT TRAP
    P AINE was a bad one; a boy or a man should know his place, but Paine beat his head against the wall. At fourteen he was mute, but his silence was dark and sullen, and that revealed to people clearly enough that there was a devil inside of him. Once the Squire whipped him half to death for trespass, and Paine screamed out through his agony, “God help you and your kind! God help you! God damn you! God damn you!”
    â€œA bad one, and take the rod to him before he does murder,” the Squire told Paine’s father.
    Tom said, “He’s a fat swine.” There was truth in that; two hundred and thirty-five pounds, the Squire was a prime and ruddy English gentleman, hounds in the morning, roast beef and port for dinner, hounds in the afternoon, roast beef and port for supper, hunting talk and whisky until midnight —“By Gawd, he’s a fair fine gentleman, God bless him,” his tenants said. He was all that, and it was a wonder he put up with the devilishness of the staymaker’s son.
    The Squire had his own son in Eton, a tall, strong, handsome young man of fifteen, a pleasure to look at, and so well set out that there wasn’t a villager but was delighted to pull a forelock and give young master Harry Good Morning. Young Harry, during his last term at school, had lost eight hundred pounds at cards, and the Squire, hearing about it. slapped his knee and roared with laughter: “Damned young devil! Damned young devil!”
    Home from school with three other young bloods, Harry found country life boring. Necessity spurred him to a certain degree of inventiveness, and he and his friends decided to do a bit of lessoning on Tom Paine. However, they preserved an air of legitimacy, waiting for him to trespass, a circumstance not at all rare considering the amount of land the Squire owned. They caught the boy, beat him insensible with birch rods, and then hanged him by his foot from an oak tree. They cut him down only when it seemed that he was dead, and then, slightly disappointed to find him still breathing, they stripped him naked and rolled him in a bog. They gave him some whisky to revive him, and then whipped him home naked. Altogether, it was such a game go as they hadn’t even dared to hope for that summer, and it would provide them with an endless stream of conversation at school the following year. The Squire himself told and retold the tale, and whenever he related it went into such paroxysms that his wife feared he would have a stroke.
    At his bench, fastening stays under his father’s eye, Tom said quietly, “Thee were a staymaker, and I—and if thee were a beggar, that way I, and if thee were a thief, that way I, kneel down to the Squire, live in poverty and dirt, jump from the path when the hounds come running, pull a forelock when the lady comes, go to church and pray to God—”
    â€œShut thee!” his father roared.
    â€œI’m a man!” the boy cried hoarsely. “I tell thee, I’m a man, a man, a man!”
    â€œShut thee!” his father yelled. “Shut thee, or I’ll break thee sinful head!”
    â€œYou are a staymaker, and I am a staymaker,” the boy sobbed.
    â€œThee! Thee, thee sinful devil! With the brain of Gentiles and the speech of Gentiles, God help thee!”
    The devil was in him, roaring, buzzing in his ears,