Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude

How it begins

We lived in South Brooklyn, near to old No. 13, the Degraw Street Public School. To that I was sent, and there got all the education I was ever fated to have at any school, except the school of life and experience. I attended for some years, and even now I cannot recall without a smile the absurd incompetency of every one connected with the institution and their utter ignorance of the art of imparting knowledge to children. At home I had picked up that grand art of reading, and went to school to learn the other two R's, with any trifle that I might come across floating around promiscuously.