But one of the severest traits in him, all his life, one of the deepest characteristics of his individuality, was the barbaric intensity of his wrath against those who wronged him, the Indian-like bitterness and tenacity of the spirit of revenge in his breast when aroused by what he thought any wanton injury. He never laid claim to the spirit of saintliness, but rather trod it under foot, as affectation, pitiful weakness, or hypocrisy. This marked a gross limit of his moral sensibility in his own personal relations, though he could keenly appreciate the finest touches of abnegation and magnanimity in others. To justice, as he saw it, he was always loyal. But, when his selfhood was wounded, the pain of the bruise not rarely, perhaps, made him a little blind or perverse. Two anecdotes of his boyhood throw light on this point. In the one example he was, as it would seem, morally without excuse; in the other, pardonable, but scarcely to be approved. He was eating an apple in the street, when he came to a horse attached to a baker's cart, standing beside the curb-stone. He amused himself by holding the apple under the horse's nose, and, as often as the animal tried to bite it, suddenly snatching it away, and fetching him a blow on the mouth. At that mischievous moment the driver of the cart came up, and, crying out, "What are you doing there, you damned little scoundrel?" gave him a piercing cut across the leg with his whip. The little fellow limped off in excruciating pain, but carefully marked his enemy. The passion for revenge burned in him. He kept a sharp lookout. Within a week he spied the driver a short distance ahead. He picked up a stone, took good aim, and, striking him on the back of the head, knocked him from his cart into the street. He then dismissed the subject from his mind, satisfied that he had squared accounts. Many would hold that, instead of squaring accounts, he had only made a bad matter worse. But such was his way of regarding it; and the business of a biographer is to tell the truth.