“I have always considered it as both cruel and ironical of nature that she should have bestowed upon the daughters of this drunkard and madman, a little of his own originality--divinity, that taint of genius, which brought him to the gutter. Look at me well, my deliverer, and you will see what I mean. If you choose you may read my dreadful secret in my eyes; in the shape of my lips; in the expanse of my nostril. It is there still, although drink and the gutter have defaced its bloom. Look at me, I say, and you will read my poor father’s history. You will see in my face that ambition for which he sought an anodyne in the drinking of drams. Sometimes when he grew tired of painting himself he would have me to sit to him, and he would tell me I was amazingly like him in his youth. He would also take my younger sister as his model, but she did not interest him as much as I. ‘Polly is destined for middle courses,’ he would say. ‘She is neither good fowl, fish, nor flesh. One of these days she will effect a compromise, and will be admitted to membership of the Great Trades Union.’ “‘As for thee, thou little slattern of a wench,’ he would say, running his fingers through my hair, as he cuffed me affectionately, ‘I am afraid to cast thy horoscope. I cannot predict what will become of thee. Such a face as thine, thou dirty one, is born to a dreadful and cynical hatred of things as they are. I can see a bitter scorn in thee for those hare-hearted rogues who run the show. Like thy illustrious father thou wilt live to be a thorn in the bowels of the canaille.’ I was too young at that time to understand what was the meaning of my illustrious parent, but often since, as I have sunk from one stratum of my calling to another--there are degrees in this profession of mine--have I recalled his words, and I have marvelled at his power of seeing into the future. “It was this father of ours, who before he deferred to the hand of death, launched my sister and myself upon our respective careers in the world. There was nothing hypocritical or pharisaical about this painter and lyric poet. In his heart he never aspired to those principles which he denounced with his lips. He sent our beauty to market as soon as it had reached the age of puberty. He caused us to cease the scrubbing of floors, lest it should roughen our hands. We were turned out upon the streets with rouge on our cheeks; for it seemed to dawn upon him all at once, in one of his Titanic flashes of inspiration, that there was a rational way of obtaining money to buy the brandy for which he craved during every hour of the day. “After my father’s death, my younger sister grew into a charming, accomplished, and beautiful woman. In the course of time she aspired to the prizes of her trade. For several years she lived in refinement and luxury with a judge of the High Court; and upon his demise was able to claim the interest of a prosperous and clever criminal lawyer of the name of Whitcomb.