Timbs was a clever fellow; plenty of thought had he, and plenty of ingenuity: he could reason out a point with any one, and win the day for his own opinions too, which opinions were honest and right enough. He had a turn for mechanics, he liked to read, he liked to digest what he had read. What works of a useful and educational tendency he could afford, he took in, in weekly parts; but, with the exception of the book of birds, they had long since disappeared into that great caldron for dissolving all home comforts, the pawn-shop. And the man never missed what had once been his pride, never regretted for an instant what once he could hardly live without, for his brain was dull and clouded, his thinking powers gone. No, Timbs never troubled himself to think now; the Dolphin had done this for him. To complete his ruin, this mistress of iniquity attacked his soul. There were many good points in the man once, he had been a loving husband and a kind father; his little children used to cling about his neck and kiss him; his wife's face used to brighten at his approach. He was liked too by the neighbours, for he was good-natured and obliging. But now he beat his wife, he cursed his children--they fled at his approach, they shrank in terror from his glance; no pity moved him, no tears softened him. In short, the Dolphin had made not a brute, but a devil of what had once been created in the likeness of God. The children of this couple grew up as such children would be likely to grow up, stunted in body, undeveloped in mind. The poor mother could hardly feed them, much less attempt to educate them: the father endeavoured to injure, but not to improve them. Molly and Patty were the best of the group. Molly and Patty had as babies been properly fed. As little children they had enjoyed some of the good things of life; they also could remember kind words and tones with a ring of love in them. Consequently they were the strongest in body, and the best in soul. They were by no means either good or amiable, but they were less bad and less unamiable than the seven who came beneath them. These little girls were employed at a factory where they managed to support themselves, and so lighten their mother's burden; and though they told lies, and though in every possible way they cheated their employers and quarrelled with their neighbours, yet they loved their mother; they loved each, the other. There was quite a tender attachment between this rough little pair. I think either would have died for the other. As for the seven below them--the seven who had always been starved and used roughly, on whom the world had always frowned, and never, even in infancy, smiled--these little miseries, who drew in starvation, cruelty, hunger, with their first breath--why, they grew up something like Cain. If every man's hand was against them, so would their hands be against every man.