This was true enough as regards the girls, I know, but I hated her for all that; only I hated myself still more. As I grew in years my dullness so preyed upon me that in all my reflections on the great and desirable things in life. Smartness always stood foremost and the best of all. My affliction made me still more shy, until in time what was at first only a trait, became a habit, and one that I have never been able to quite throw off, though the vicissitudes of life and much intercourse with men have somewhat lessened its embarrassments. While on this subject I may say, going to the other extreme, that neither my dear wife nor my children will ever admit that I could have been dull in my youth, and at this I smile and even make believe; but they know little of human nature, and their skepticism only proves their love. For their disbelief grows out of the knowledge that in middle life I was able to take up whatever interested me and carry it forward to a more or less successful conclusion. This facility, however, came too late to enliven my childhood, and did not arise so much from any talent I possessed as from experience and reflection—things that come to all of us with mature years. My amiability in youth, coupled with my lack of smartness, caused me to be much set upon by boys more precocious than I, and, in consequence, the quiet of my life was often rudely disturbed. For it is only truth to say that while my eyes may have been mild and my manner soft, I really had a very high temper if much stress was put upon it. Then, going to the other extreme, no situation of peril could prevent its blazing forth. At such times my rage, rising higher and higher, like a prairie fire, grew with what it fed upon, only to die away finally of shame or for want of something to keep it alive. These outbreaks occasioned me much self-abasement, and I would often cry out in agony at the excess of my passions, but without much if any good coming from it that I could see. Such temper was unknown to my early youth, or maybe it only lay dormant. For afterward, when fortune threw me, a stripling, into the world, I was so crowded and jostled about, as the unprotected are apt to be in such cases—and generally to their good—that from being mild and gentle, I became as fierce and intractable as a wild beast. However, I now look back upon this period with a sense of thankfulness that I did not become so wedded to its excesses as not to be conscious in the end that I could not thus get on in the world, but that sooner or later I should have it arrayed solidly against me. With the aid of such reflections and other help, and the fact that I was inclined to be affectionate if circumstances favored, I was in time able to resume some part of my old cheerfulness of manner. This, however, I believe, that to those who were kind to me, and in every case to those who were weak, I was never aught but gentle. For certainly, to the unfortunate my