"The woman, who seemed at one time to have been better off, was left a sum of money to bring me up, as no relations appeared to claim me. At this time the woman was single, and had not met the man she afterwards married, the man who used to beat me so cruelly. Whether she spent all the money left for me, or whether they both spent it, appears to be of little consequence; anyway, once it was gone I was regarded with black looks as an encumbrance, and turned out into the streets to make some money, or do something for my board and lodging, as they expressed it. I have already told you what the lodging was like. Well, the board part of it corresponded to the rest of the picture in every way. Crusts of old dry bread, which they couldn't eat themselves, did for me and the dog, sometimes a little milk, varied by an occasional awful form of hard cake which the woman cooked, and which was impossible to eat unless first soaked in something. In the long hours of waiting between selling the newspapers I learned to spell, and then to read, very slowly at first, but still I learned. Then one of the men employed at the newspaper office I collected papers from, although I should imagine a very poor man himself, found a few pence every week to have me taught to write and spell, together with arithmetic, grammar, history and other things. This rather uncertain method of education went on for about two years. I was getting on fine, and absorbing everything I was taught with great rapidity, when my one friend, who had provided the night school education, departed to another world where I always hope he found the conditions easier than the one he had left. I might have been at my miserable home in the slums with the man and woman for years after this, only a curious form of providence was working upon my behalf.