'I throve and grew; my constitution was iron--my sinews were steel, and my heart a lion's. Up to the age of twelve, I was as other children are--I cried when I was whipped, and submitted when oppressed. At twelve, I began to reason and think; I said to myself,--Before me lies the world, created for the use of all its inhabitants. I am an inhabitant and entitled to my share--but other inhabitants, being rogues and sharpers, refuse to let me have my share. The world plunders me--in turn, I will plunder the world! 'At fourteen, I bade adieu to the Alms House, without the knowledge or consent of the overseer. I exchanged my grey pauper suit for a broadcloth of a young nabob, which I accidentally found in one of the chambers of a fashionable hotel, in Court street. Behold me, then, a gentleman! But I had no money; and so took occasion to borrow a trifling sum from an old gentleman, one night, upon one of the bridges which lead from Boston to Charleston. Do you ask how he came to give me credit? Why, I just tapped him on the head with a paving stone tied up in the corner of a handkerchief, after which delicate salutation he made not the slightest objection to my borrowing what he had about him. The next day it was said that a man's body had been found on the bridge, with his skull severely smashed--but what cared I? 'Gay was the life I led; for I was young and handsome. You laugh--but I was handsome then--my features had not the deathlike expression which they now wear. By and by you shall learn how I acquired the hideousness of face which procured for me the title of the _Dead Man_. 'One day I made too free with a gentleman's gold watch on the Common; and they shut me up for five years in the Stone University, where I completed my education at the expense of the State. At twenty I was free again. Behold me, then, a thoroughly educated scoundrel! I resolved to enlarge my modes of operation, and play the villain on a more extensive scale.