FIRST CHAPTER
IT happened in this wise -
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again,
without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow,
it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They
may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very
difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth
phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better.
SECOND CHAPTER
IT happened in THIS wise -
But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former
opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated. This is the
more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new
connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard
the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the
preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my
explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will make a
third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that
it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they
be of head or heart.
THIRD CHAPTER
NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon
it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that
is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant
home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of father's
Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different
in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I
recollect, that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used
tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-
tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will
be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and
that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-
pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of
bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her
eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and
hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a
three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would
pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money
home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my
ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces),
would feint and dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether I
cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for
that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner
when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
would still say, 'O, you worldly little devil!' And the sting of
it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.
Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
