Let thy Child's first Lesson be Obedience, and the second may be what thou wilt. - Benjamin Franklin, 1739

"Don't dawdle, you young scamps!" said Mrs. Parks.

"Yes'm!" chorused the two young apprentices.

Zachary Malvern rushed to finish his meager breakfast of porridge. The twelve-year-old quickly emptied his pewter porriger, or one-handled bowl, and placed it, along with the well worn pewter spoon, by the kitchen sink to be cleaned by the maid. Jeremy Topper, the 16-year-old senior apprentice, finished his breakfast seconds later.

"Alright, you lazy lumps," said Mrs. Parks, "get to work, the pair of you!"

"Yes'm!" said the two boys in unison as they donned their hats and headed to work.

The two lads shared a smirk as they walked down the kitchen steps at the rear of their master's house and headed across the back yard towards the print shop where they worked. Jeremy and Zachary didn't see eye to eye on many things. They weren't really ememies, but they were hardly friends. One thing they did agree on was their disdain for their master's wife. The feeling was mutual on all fronts - Mrs. Parks had little affection for apprentice boys.

From a distance the two youths could have been mistaken for brothers. They wore identical suits in black and white, for a start. Their tricorn hats were black with white trim. They wore black broadcloth vests and breeches, along with black leather shoes with pewter buckles. They wore white shirts, stockings and jabots (ornamental ruffles which cascaded down the front of their shirts).

At close range it was clear that the two boys were not related - in addition to their faces being entirely dissimilar, Jeremy had curly black hair whereas Zachary sported long straight hair in a shade of light brown.

Zachary Malvern was an orphan who had been apprenticed to William Parks, printer and publisher, just three months ago. Mr. Parks was the publisher of the Virginia Gazette, the first newspaper in the Virginia Colony. In fact Mr. Parks was the owner of two major newspapers in the colonies. He owned the Maryland Gazette, published in Annapolis, and the Virginia Gazette, published here in the colonial capital of Williamsburg.

Zachary quite liked Mr. Parks. A brilliant and successful man, Mr. Parks demanded a great deal of hard work from his apprentices - from everyone who worked for him. But the man also took the time to teach his workers how to properly do their jobs, and treated them with respect, if not friendship.

Mr. Parks was not the problem. The fact that he owned two newspapers in two different colonies was the problem. Whenever Mr. Parks traveled to Annapolis to check on business there he left the operation of the Virginia Gazette in the hands of his assistant publisher, Maynard Castle. Another thing that Jeremy and Zachary agreed on was that Maynard Castle was a nasty piece of work.

Jeremy unlocked the rear door to the print shop, and Zachary followed the older boy inside, closing the door behind him. They moved warily through the darkened rear store room and out into the well lit main shop. Two large bay windows admitted plenty of light to the work area and office. Fortunately Mr. Castle had not arrived yet, so the two apprentices would enjoy a few moments of calm before another stormy day began.

"Open the doors, Zach," ordered Jeremy.

"Alright, Jere," said Zachary. He moved to open the front and side doors to let air flow through the shop area as they worked, on what promised to be the hottest day of the summer so far.

After opening the doors, Zachary stopped by the big composition table to view the type for the front page of the new issue. Everything was typeset backwards, of course, so that it would print properly when pressed to the paper. Zachary had always done well studying his letters in school, which was one of the reasons that Mr. Parks took him on as an apprentice. But it was taking some getting used to, this having to typeset everything backwards.

Not that anyone was letting a brand new 12-year-old apprentice do anything as advanced as typesetting. Zachary's job mainly involved cleaning up around the shop, making deliveries, and running errands.

Mr. Parks had recently started training Zachary in the basic elements of the printing trade, such as fetching type for the compositor (the man who set the type), and mixing tubs of ink for the pressman. His training in those areas would continue when Mr. Parks returned from his current business trip to Annapolis.

By half past seven in the morning the other workers had arrived and the workday began. The shop would be hectic this Thursday morning, because they only had two more days to finish pressing the July 9, 1742 issue of the Virginia Gazette.

Zachary was not a superstitious boy. His parents had been very practical people, though God fearing. They also rejected the idea of luck. "Hard work will trump luck every time!" had been one of his father's favorite sayings. So Zachary didn't really believe in luck, the good kind or the bad kind. Unfortunately that opinion wasn't shared by everyone in Williamsburg.

It all started when Zachary was mixing ink for Miles Robinson, the burly pressman. Robinson was a convict servant, who had been transported to the colonies from England and indentured to Mr. Parks for a period of seven years. Zachary was bound to Mr. Parks for a total of eight years, but at least the lad had entered into his apprenticeship voluntarily. Robinson had not volunteered for his servitude, so he tended to be irritable and short-tempered.

They had been working less than an hour that morning when Zachary attempted to hand a full tub of ink to Robinson and it dropped, splashing ink on both of them and coating the surrounding area with the stuff. Zachary had been very careful during the transfer, and it was plain to him that Robinson had been the careless one who let the heavy tub slip from his grasp. Robinson, predictably, blamed the whole thing on Zachary - calling him a bad luck little devil, as well as a careless, lazy little brat.

Unfortunately none of the other workers in the shop witnessed the incident as it happened. So in the end it was the word of a full-grown man with two years of experience working in the shop against the word of a twelve-year-old apprentice boy with only three months of experience. It should come as no surprise to anyone whose version of the story Mr. Castle chose to believe.

Zachary was summarily found guilty of being a lazy little brat whose carelessness had just cost his master a great deal of time and money. Mr. Castle took far too much delight in passing sentence. Zachary was ordered to clean the spilled ink off the floor, the machinery, Mr. Robinson, and himself. When he was done with that, Zachary was to report to Mr. Castle to get a "good dose" of the strap.

Zachary was red-faced and humiliated as he cleaned up the inky mess. Not only were all the other workers in the shop aware that Zachary was "for it" with the strap, but so were most of the customers in the place.

In addition to being a print shop, Mr. Parks' establishment was also the local stationery shop, bookstore and newstand, along with being the defacto post office for the entire area. This meant that people were streaming in and out of the place all day long, six days a week. So by the time Zachary finished cleaning up the spilled ink and presented himself to Mr. Castle, who was seated at the desk near the front door, there was quite a small crowd there to watch the proceedings.

Mr. Castle wasted no time, but ordered Zachary to remove his hat and lay himself face down across the stool that the boy normally sat on when receiving instruction from Mr. Parks. As the shame-faced boy lowered himself over the stool, he couldn't help but notice two other apprentice boys, and even two negro slave boys, mixed in with several gawking, sneering adults. These lads had obviously been sent to the shop on various errands for their own masters, and were lingering there in order to see the free show.

As the first Thwwaacckk! announced the commencement of his whipping, Zachary grabbed the lower rungs of the stool with both hands and stared straight down at the floor. He couldn't bear to face the staring crowd.

Thwwaacckk! The pain seared his bottom, right through the seat of his breeches. Zachary gritted his teeth, determined not to make a sound.

Thwwwaaaccckk! As the pain intensified, Zachary was glad of one thing about this situation. At least Mr. Castle, and indeed Mr. Parks, allowed their apprentices to keep their breeches on when they were being strapped in the shop.

Thwwwwaaaccckk! "Sssssssss!" Zachary inhaled, hissing, as the fourth whack landed on the seat of his breeches. The thin summer breeches (and even thinner linen drawers) did little to protect his backside from the damage being done by the heavy harness leather strap. But at least the gawking onlookers couldn't see his bare bottom clenching and reddening.

Zachary's own father, a master cooper, used to make his junior apprentices lower their breeches and drawers when he took a strap to them. Zachary remembered being a small boy in his father's cooperage, staring in fascination as a 12 or 13-year-old apprentice boy bucked and writhed over an unfinished barrel, as his father's heavy leather strap painted the quivering bare bottom varying shades of red and purple and the bottom's owner howled.

Thwwwwaaacccckkk! "Aaaahhh!" Zachary grunted, no longer able to keep quiet in the face of the mounting pain.

"He's feeling it now!" commented one onlooker.

"Serves him right, little printer's devil!" said another.

Thwwwwwaaaacccckkk! "Nooooo!!!" Zachary yelped. The pain really was getting bad now. Mr. Parks had told him it was a tradition from back in England, that the youngest printer's apprentice was called the "printer's devil". That unlucky lad typically got blamed for everything that went wrong in the print shop.

"Let the little devil have it, Maynard!"

"Yeah, make him howl!"

Thwwwwwwaaaaaccccckkk! "Ooowwwwwww!!!" Zachary howled, and he could feel the tears start to flow. Zachary didn't feel like a devil, but the "getting blamed for everything that happened" part sure did apply to him.

"Now you're getting through to him, Maynard!"

"Nasty, lazy little orphan brat!"

Thwwwwwwaaaaaccccckkk! "Yoooowwwwcchhh!!!" The tears flowed freer as the pain increased.

Zachary yelped with unexpected pain as Mr. Castle grabbed him by the hair and yanked, pulling his head up so he was facing the small crowd who had taunted him as he was being whipped.

"Ah, Maynard!" said the stout man who had been egging Mr. Castle on by name throughout the proceedings, "You're not lettin' the little devil off that easy, er ya?"

"Get out of it, Ernie Partridge!" yelled Mr. Castle, irritably. "Don't you have work to do? The rest of you men, too. Get on with it!"

There was grumbling among the watching men and boys, most of whom were staring at Zachary's tear-streaked face, anxious for a continuation of the beating.

"And you boys," said Mr. Castle, eyeing the apprentice and slave boys in the crowd, "get your little tails out of here unless you want to line up and each have a turn getting strapped over this stool for our amusement."

It almost made Zachary laugh to see the grins on the faces of the other boys turn into panicked looks as they quickly fled the scene. The grumbling men soon followed them out when they realized the strapping was truly over. All the workers in the print shop got back to business as well, before their boss realized they had stopped work to watch him whip the young apprentice.

Finally Mr. Castle turned back to Zachary and said, "Are you gonna be more careful with the master's ink?"

"Yes, sir," gasped Zachary. He had already been strapped for something he didn't do. No point in causing any more trouble.

"Anything else to say, boy?," said Mr. Castle.

"I am truly sorry, sir. It won't happen again."

"It better not happen again, or you'll get double the dose."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Castle released Zachary's hair and said, "Get up then, and get back to work."

"Yes, sir," said Zachary, as he painfully got up off the stool.

As the boy limped slowly away, wiping the tears from his eyes, Mr. Castle said, "Malvern! See that you apologize to Mr. Robinson for falsely accusing him of something you did."

"Yes, sir," said Zachary.

After the ink debacle of Thursday morning, Zachary was forbidden from handling ink again "until Mr. Parks could return and show him how to do it properly." The boy had to hold his tongue through this further indignity. He spent the rest of the morning making deliveries and running errands. This suited Zachary just fine, since it kept him mostly out of the shop and away from Mr. Castle.

Zachary was surprised, and a bit ungrateful when Miles Robinson presented him with a cinnamon roll the man had acquired during lunch on Thursday. Robinson quietly apologized for blaming Zachary for the ink spillage. His reasoning was that the young apprentice only ended up embarrassed and with a sore bottom, whereas the convict servant could well have had additional time added to his indenture to pay for the damage.

Zachary wasn't thrilled with this excuse when he first heard it, but he later came to see the logic of it. He would probably never completely trust Robinson again, but the man was a convict, so what could you expect?

Mrs. Parks was furious when Zachary came home from work Thursday night wearing his ink-stained clothes. She was even more insensed when Jeremy told her about Miles Robinson's stained clothes. Her husband was responsible for supplying the clothing for both his apprentices and his indentured servants.

Mr. Parks required all his servants and employees to be reasonably well dressed at all times while working, so the ink stained clothes were now practically useless. Since apprentices had no wages to deduct the damages from, Mrs. Parks chose to take the payment out of Zachary's hide.

Before going to bed on Thursday night, Zachary was required to report to Mrs. Parks clad only in his nightshirt. The irate woman put the boy over her lap, tucked up his nightshirt in the back, and applied her wooden hairbrush vigorously to the boy's bare, already bruised bottom until he howled and kicked. After a final crescendo of whacks, she pushed the bawling lad off her lap and sent him off to bed, "to reflect on the error of his ways."

As Zachary lay on his tummy, sobbing himself to sleep, he began to think that some days were unlucky after all.