At the age of two, when his
strength enabled him to toddle abroad, his favourite resort was the
coal-hole or the dung-heap: his roarings had not diminished in the
least, and he had added to his former virtues two new ones,--a love
of fighting and stealing; both which amiable qualities he had many
opportunities of exercising every day. He fought his little
adoptive brothers and sisters; he kicked and cuffed his father and
mother; he fought the cat, stamped upon the kittens, was worsted in
a severe battle with the hen in the backyard; but, in revenge,
nearly beat a little sucking-pig to death, whom he caught alone and
rambling near his favourite haunt, the dung-hill. As for stealing,
he stole the eggs, which he perforated and emptied; the butter,
which he ate with or without bread, as he could find it; the sugar,
which he cunningly secreted in the leaves of a "Baker's Chronicle,"
that nobody in the establishment could read; and thus from the pages
of history he used to suck in all he knew--thieving and lying
namely; in which, for his years, he made wonderful progress. If any
followers of Miss Edgeworth and the philosophers are inclined to
disbelieve this statement, or to set it down as overcharged and
distorted, let them be assured that just this very picture was, of
all the pictures in the world, taken from nature.
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