At six years of age my health had become firmly established, but this establishment caused dismay in that of Joe Brandon. As I was no longer the sickly infant that called for incessant attention and the most careful nurture, it was intimated to my foster-parents that a considerable reduction would be made in the quarterly allowance paid on my account. The indignation of Brandon was excessive. He looked upon himself as one grievously wronged. No sinecurist, with his pension recently reduced, could have been more vehement on the subject of the sanctity of vested rights. But his ire was not to be vented in idle declamation only. He was not a man to rest content with mere words: he declaimed for a full hour upon his wife's folly in procuring him the means of well-fed idleness so long, threatened to take the brat--meaning no less a personage than myself--to the workhouse: and then wound up affairs, indoors, by beating his wife, and himself, out of doors, by getting royally drunk. This was the first scene that made a deep impression on me. Young as I was, I comprehended that I was the cause of the ill-treatment of my nurse, whom I fondly loved. I interfered--I placed my little body between her and her brutal oppressor. I scratched, I kicked, I screamed--I grew mad with passion. At that hour, the spirit of evil and of hate blew the dark coal in my heart into a flame; and the demon of violent anger has ever since found it too easy to erect there his altar, of which the fire, though, at the time, all-consuming, is never durable. From that moment I commenced my intellectual existence. I looked on the sobbing mother, and knew what it was to love, and my love found its expression in an agony of tears. I looked on the tyrant, I felt what it was to hate, and endeavoured to relieve the burning desire to punish with frantic actions and wild outcries. Old Ford, who had been present and enjoyed the _fracas_, immediately took me into his especial favour; he declared that I was after his own heart, for I had the devil in me-- said that I had the right spirit to bring me to the gallows, and he hoped, old as he was, to live to see it: he then entreated of the Lord that my precious soul might be saved as a burning brand out of the fire--took me by the hand and led me to the next gin-shop--made me taste the nauseating poison--told me I was a little man, and it was glorious to fight--doubled up for me my puny fists, and asserted that cowards only suffered a blow without returning it. A lesson like this never can be forgotten. I ground my teeth whilst I was receiving it--I clenched my hands, and looked wildly round for something to destroy. I was in training to become a little tiger. From what I then experienced, I can easily conceive the feelings that actuate, and can half forgive the crowned monsters who have revelled in blood, and relished the inflicting of torture; as pandering to their worst passions in infancy resolves