against a charge of murdering his own brother--with whom he had a
quarrel about some land--had disappeared and his fate is to this day
unknown.

In the meantime my poor father's body had been secretly buried at
midnight in the back yard of his late residence, with his late boots on
and the contents of his late stomach unanalyzed. "He was opposed to
display," said my dear mother, as she finished tamping down the earth
above him and assisted the children to litter the place with straw; "his
instincts were all domestic and he loved a quiet life."

My mother's application for letters of administration stated that she
had good reason to believe that the deceased was dead, for he had not
come home to his meals for several days; but the Judge of the Crowbait
Court--as she ever afterward contemptuously called it--decided that the
proof of death was insufficient, and put the estate into the hands of
the Public Administrator, who was his son-in-law. It was found that the
liabilities were exactly balanced by the assets; there was left only the
patent for the device for bursting open safes without noise, by
hydraulic pressure and this had passed into the ownership of the Probate
Judge and the Public Administrator--as my dear mother preferred to
spell it. Thus, within a few brief months a worthy and respectable
family was reduced from prosperity to crime; necessity compelled us to
go to work.

In the selection of occupations we were governed by a variety of
considerations, such as personal fitness, inclination, and so forth. My
mother opened a select private school for instruction in the art of
changing the spots upon leopard-skin rugs; my eldest brother, George
Henry, who had a turn for music, became a bugler in a neighboring asylum