Down in a dismal cellar, so poorly lighted, indeed, that you could scarce distinguish his tiny figure when it came into the world, Bob was born. Our little hero began life where we all must end it――underground; and certainly many a burial-vault might have seemed a less grimy, gloomy home than his. But Bob’s wretchedness being coeval with his birth, he never knew what it was to be otherwise than wretched. He cried and crowed pretty much like other infants, and his mother declared he was the finest child ever born in this cellar. “And, O darling!” she sighed more than once, while he snugged to her bosom――“O darling! if you could stay always what you are.” It was easy to feed him, easy to care for him, now. How would he fare along the rugged road winding through the misty future? Nothing looked so beautiful to his baby eyes as the golden streak across the floor which appeared once a day for a few minutes; and as soon as he was able to creep he moved towards it and tried to catch it, and wondered very much when the streak faded away. Bob’s only playmate was a poodle dog, who loved the sunshine too, and was able at first to get more of it than he; and the child always whimpered when Pin left him to go bask on the sidewalk. But by and by, when he grew older, he followed his dumb friend up the steps, and would sit for hours beside him; and the dog was very fond of his little master, if we may judge by the constant wagging of his bushy tail. When Bob was four years old his mother died. This was too young an age for him to comprehend what had happened. It surprised him a little when they carried the body away; and when she breathed her last words: “I am going, dear one; I wish I could take you with me,” he answered: “Going where, mammy?” “When is mammy coming home?” he asked of several persons who lodged in the cellar with him, and stayed awake the first night a whole hour waiting for her to return. But ere long Bob ceased to think about his mother, and in the course of a month ’twas as if she had never been; there was rather more space in the underground chamber than before, and now he had all the blanket to himself. Thus we see that the boy began early the battle of life. When he felt hungry, he would enter a baker’s shop near by, and stretch forth his puny hand; and sometimes he was given a morsel of bread, and sometimes he was not. But Bob was too spirited to lie down and starve. So, when the baker shook his head, saying, “You come here too often,” he watched a chance and stole peanuts from the stand on the corner. The Ten Commandments did not trouble him in the least; for he had never heard of them. Bob only knew that there was a day in the week when the baker looked more solemn than on other days, and when the streets were less crowded.