that I began to envy, and at length to hate, the darling of the
house. Yet, I perfectly remember, that it was the caresses, and
kind expressions of my step-mother, which first excited my jealous
discontent. Once, I cannot forget it, when she was calling in vain
her wayward child to kiss her, I ran to her, saying, 'I will kiss you,
ma'am!' and how did my heart, which was in my mouth, sink, what was
my debasement of soul, when pushed away with--'I do not want you,
pert thing!' Another day, when a new gown had excited the highest good
humour, and she uttered the appropriate dear, addressed unexpectedly to
me, I thought I could never do enough to please her; I was all alacrity,
and rose proportionably in my own estimation.

"As her daughter grew up, she was pampered with cakes and fruit, while
I was, literally speaking, fed with the refuse of the table, with her
leavings. A liquorish tooth is, I believe, common to children, and I
used to steal any thing sweet, that I could catch up with a chance of
concealment. When detected, she was not content to chastize me herself
at the moment, but, on my father's return in the evening (he was
a shopman), the principal discourse was to recount my faults, and
attribute them to the wicked disposition which I had brought into the
world with me, inherited from my mother. He did not fail to leave the
marks of his resentment on my body, and then solaced himself by playing
with my sister.--I could have murdered her at those moments. To save
myself from these unmerciful corrections, I resorted to falshood, and
the untruths which I sturdily maintained, were brought in judgment
against me, to support my tyrant's inhuman charge of my natural
propensity to vice. Seeing me treated with contempt, and always being
fed and dressed better, my sister conceived a contemptuous opinion of
me, that proved an obstacle to all affection; and my father, hearing
continually of my faults, began to consider me as a curse entailed