The exploits of the wild brothers, while the family lived in Dorset Street, were severely condemned by their strict mother. * Occasionally she even went the length of castigating George, when he returned home in the small hours from fairs or horse-races, or the prize-ring, far from sober; or when he had been emulating the exploits of Tom and Jerry with wild companions. He is described at this early time as gifted with extraordinary animal spirits, and filled with a reckless spirit of adventure, in the dangerous byways of London. What he saw in these days he carefully observed and set down. His field of observation stretched from the foot of the gallows to Greenwich fair; through coal-holes, cider-cellars, cribs, and prize-fighters’ taverns, Petticoat Lane, and Smith-field. Its centre was Covent Garden market, where the young bloods drank and sang and fought under the piazzas, something more than sixty years ago. * “Take the pencil out of my sons’ hands,” she used to say, “and they are a couple of boobies.” [Illustration: 063] [Illustration: 064] CHAPTER III. CRUIKSHANK’S EARLY DAYS. Directly Isaac Cruikshank’s boys could hold a tool they appear to have been apprenticed to the father’s art-trade. Robert, the elder, was a spirited worker--perhaps on a level with his father; but the handsome, bright-eyed younger son, George, soon gave signs of a deeper original power of observation, and of surprising humour and fancy, that drew him away from sire and brother, and gave him a strong and distinct individuality.