But in spite of this general, though silent protest, beginning with his own father and mother, and extending in larger and larger circles to society and the great public, and even including the mute sufferers among the beasts and birds and fishes, Timothy has come, and, as he has thus audaciously braved the public, and defied the very universe, as it were, he must smart for it. Of course he ought to smart for it, and happily his worst enemy could not wish him a greater punishment than that which will befall him. Indeed, we doubt not that if Timothy himself could see the stony path which lies before him, he would bitterly repent of having come, and would cry out as Cain did: “My punishment is greater than I can bear!” In the first place, though the milk which he draws from his mother’s breast may taste sweet to him, there will be no love in his mother’s heart for him, but in its stead a dull sense of hopeless bitterness and abuse, of which, in spite of herself, Timothy will be the scape-goat. Her motherly nature, long deadened to patience and gentleness, will have left only harsh words for Timothy’s baby-fretfulness, and rude blows for his baby-mischievousness. Kisses and caresses, a mother’s yearning tenderness toward him, a mother’s guiding influence over him, a mother’s aspirations for him, these Timothy will never know. He will simply be sullenly and peevishly endured, so long as it would be a flagrant crime to expel him, and will be left to his own harmful devices as soon as possible. But then what business had Timothy to come? He was not wanted. To his father, little, curious Timothy will simply be as one of the hens or pigs with which he plays around the back door, though of course of nothing like the same importance to the Totten household. Rough words, and blows unalternated by anything kindlier, rags and dirt, cold and hunger, will be his home associations, and his education will be gotten in the street. Brought up to no habits of settled industry, yet impelled to in some way feed fierce passions which have been trained to no other restraint than that of cruel want, what wonder that Timothy becomes the little wild beast which society so much dreaded, and which it was so fearfully interested to have kept back! But Timothy grows up a predaceous, devouring creature, with life before him which he must get through in some way. Happily for society, he may be fenced in by jails for a part of the time, and thus gotten rid of, but reappearing again at intervals with accumulated terrors, he pursues his predatory career until, his constitution too broken for active violence, he becomes an unsightly, malodorous, pestiferous tramp, and thus ends his short, eventful history,--a mournful example of retributive justice for coming where he was not wanted. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI.