Well, it went on. My infancy was one sickening round of glory. Did I build a house of bricks four courses high? Archimedes wasn't in it with me. Did I sing a nursery rhyme to a tune all one note? Apollo was a dabbler in music beside me. Did one of my first teeth drop out without my knowing it? Casabianca on the burning deck couldn't touch me for fortitude. Did I once and again chance to tell the truth? Latimer, Ridley, George Washington, and Euclid might retire into private life at once, and never be heard of again! It was a terrific _role_ to have to keep up, and as I gradually emerged from frocks into trousers, and from an easy-going infancy into an anxious boyhood, the true nature of my affliction began to dawn upon me. Hannibal Trotter, through no choice of his own, and yet by the undoubted ordering of Fate, was a hero, and he must act as such. He must, in fact, keep it up or give it up; and a fellow cannot lightly give up the only _role_ he has. In due time, after heroic efforts, I was, at about the age of ten, able to read to myself, and my attention was at once directed to a class of stories congenial to my reputation. It would hardly be fair to inflict upon the patient reader a digest of my studies, but the one impression they left upon my mind was that a young man, if he is to be worth the name, must on every possible occasion both be a hero and show it. This conclusion rather distressed me; for while the first condition was easy and natural enough, the second was no joke. I knew I was a hero; I could not doubt it, for I had been brought up to the business, and to question it would be to question the veracity of every relative I had. But try all I would I couldn't manage to show it. After a considerable amount of patient study, my conceptions of a hero had resolved themselves into several leading ideas, which it may be of use to the reader if I repeat here:-- 1. He must save one life or more from drowning. 2. He must stop runaway horses. 3. He must rescue people from burning houses. 4. He must pull some one from under the wheels of a train. 5. He must encounter and slay a mad dog in single combat. 6. He must capture a burglar; and 7. He must interpose his body between the pistol of the assassin and the person of some individual of consequence. In my researches I had collected a mass of information under each of these heads, and was perfectly acquainted with what was becoming in a hero in each emergency. But, as I have said, try all I would the chance never came.