Further than this, I do think he was the cruelest boy that could be met with anywhere. Not only was he always amusing himself with poking bits of stick through the wires of my little canary’s cage, and fluttering it, until it had no more feathers on its body than a gosling, but he led our dog Carlo such a life that I really expected he’d drive him mad before he’d done with him. Either he’d be throwing the cat right on top of his back, or else he’d turn his ears inside out and tie them over his head; or else he’d harness him, out in the garden, to the beautiful little carriage I had bought for Kitty, and then clapping his hands and hooting, so as to frighten the poor thing, it would start off at such a rate that it would nearly break the chaise all to pieces against the wall. And if he could only smuggle the poor dumb creature out of the house with him when I sent him an errand, off he’d be to that muddy Regent’s Canal, and amuse himself by throwing the wretched animal right off the bridge into the water, and presently I should see it running home with all the mud that it had been rolling itself in on the way clinging to his beautiful curly coat, for all the world as if he had been covered over with fuller’s earth. Nothing would please him, too, but he must go keeping white mice in the knife-house, making the place smell as ratty as a house in chancery; and this wasn’t enough, but the hard-hearted young savage must let all the wretched animals die of starvation, and wouldn’t even take the trouble to give the poor things their food for more than a week after he had got them.