Many of Hood's most humorous productions were dictated to his wife, while he himself was in bed from distressing and protracted sickness. His own family was the only one which was not delighted with the Comic Annual, so well thumbed in every house. "We, ourselves," writes his son, "did not enjoy it till the lapse of many years had mercifully softened down some of the sad recollections connected with it." Fun and suffering seemed to be natural to him, and to be constantly helping each other. When a boy, he drew the figure of a demon with the smoke of a candle on the staircase ceiling near his bedroom door, to frighten his brother. Unfortunately he forgot that he had done so, and, when he went to bed, succeeded in terrifying himself into fits almost--while his brother had not observed the picture. Joke he would, suffering as he might be. It is recorded of him, that upon a mustard plaster being applied to his attenuated feet, as he lay in the direst extremity, he was heard feebly to remark that there was "very little meat for the mustard." But if his wit was marvelous, so was his pathos--tender beyond comparison. His first child scarcely survived its birth. "In looking over some old papers," says his son, "I found a few tiny curls of golden hair, as soft as the finest silk, wrapped in a yellow and time-worn paper, inscribed in my father's handwriting:-- 'Little eyes that scarce did see, Little lips that never smiled; Alas! my little dear dead child, Death is thy father, and not me; I but embraced thee soon as he!'"