I, Ikey Solomons,
once had a dear little brother who could steal before he could walk
(and this not from encouragement,--for, if you know the world, you
must know that in families of our profession the point of honour is
sacred at home,--but from pure nature)--who could steal, I say,
before he could walk, and lie before he could speak; and who, at
four and a half years of age, having attacked my sister Rebecca on
some question of lollipops, had smitten her on the elbow with a
fire-shovel, apologising to us by saying simply, "---- her, I wish
it had been her head!" Dear, dear Aminadab! I think of you, and
laugh these philosophers to scorn. Nature made you for that career
which you fulfilled: you were from your birth to your dying a
scoundrel; you COULDN'T have been anything else, however your lot
was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs,-
-for had you been of any other profession, alas! alas! what ills
might you have done! As I have heard the author of "Richelieu,"
"Siamese Twins," etc. say "Poeta nascitur non fit," which means that
though he had tried ever so much to be a poet, it was all moonshine:
in the like manner, I say, "ROAGUS nascitur, non fit." We have it
from nature, and so a fig for Miss Edgeworth.
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