"The deuce take it."

Observe how pathetic and touching his reminiscence of his lost youth and
the priceless boon of liberty. He commences in a quiet descriptive way,
leaving one at a loss to know whether it is to be a joyful lyric a dirge
he intends singing.

"When I was a bachelor I lived by myself;
All the bread and cheese I had I laid upon the shelf."

Here we have him alone, at peace with himself and the world; happy in
the contemplation of his beloved muse; jotting down, now and then, the
brilliant ideas that flash through his teeming brain; and munching in
solitude his homely meal of bread and cheese. In telling us he laid his
bread and cheese upon the shelf, he at once shows he had left his
parental abode, and the ministering and watchful care of his maternal
parent.

There must, of course, have been a cause for such a step. Some reason
why the gentle being should have been wrought up to that pitch, when he
daringly throws off all restraint, and steps into the world to act and
think for himself. It may have been the want of sympathy that drove him
to the act. They were plain folks, and didn't appreciate his peculiar
turn of mind, and so only laughed at him, and ridiculed his pretensions.
That there was a quarrel there is no manner of doubt, and it was
probably caused by the mortifying act of his mother in fainting when he
read her the poetry he had written at her request. That, in itself, was
enough to break all ties between them. She was horrified and overwhelmed
with dismay that a child of hers could be guilty of such atrocious
rhymes; and he, in turn, was disgusted that a mother of his should be so