h of a pet pigeon. I grieved
for days over its disappearance; but one Sunday morning the secret
slipped out. Around that neighbourhood there was a custom among the
very poor of exchanging samples of their Sunday broth. Three or four
samples came to our cottage every Sunday morning. We had meat once a
week, and then it was either the hoofs or part of the head of a cow,
or the same parts of a sheep or a calf. On this particular occasion, I
knew that there was something in our broth that was unusual, and I did
not rest until I learned the truth. They had grown tired of nettle
broth, and made a change on the pigeon.

There was a pigsty at the end of our alley against the gable of our
house; but we never were rich enough to own a pig. One of my earliest
recollections is of extemporizing out of the pigsty one of the most
familiar institutions in our town--a pawn shop. If anything was
missing in the house, they could usually find it in pawn.

At the age of ten, I entered the parochial school of the Episcopal
Church; but the pedagogue of that period delegated his pedagogy to a
monitor, and the monitor to one of the biggest boys, and the school
ran itself. The only thing I remember about it is the daily rushes
over the benches and seats, and the number of boys about my size I was
pitted against in fistic battles. At the close of my first school day
I came home with one of my eyes discoloured and one sleeve torn out of
my jacket, as a result of an encounter not down on the programme. The
ignominy of such a spectacle irritated my father, and I was thoroughly
whipped for my inability to defend myself better. It was an _ex parte_
judgment which a look at the other fellow might have modified.

After a few weeks at school I begged my father to allow me to devote
my mornings as well as my evenings to the selling of newspapers. The
extra work added a little to my income and preserved my looks. If
there was any misery in my life at this time I neither knew nor felt
it. I was living the life of the average boy of my neighbourhood, and
had nothing to complain of. Of course, I was in a chronic condition of
hunger, but so was every other boy in the alley and on the street. It
was quite an event for me occasionally to go bird-nesting with the son
of the chief baker of the town. He usually brought a loaf along as
toll. My knowledge of the woods was better than his, for necessity
took me there for fuel for our hearth. Sometimes the baker's so