To this Napoleon, on the authority of the Memoirs of his Father's
Hired Man, retorted:


"I would advise you, be not indiscreet,
Or I will yank YOUR socks right of your feet."


All of which goes to show that at no time in his youth was he to be
trifled with. In poetry or a pitched battle he was quite equal to
any emergency, and his companions were not long in finding it out.

So passed the infancy of Mr. Bonaparte, of Corsica. It was, after
all, much like the extreme youth of most other children. In
everything he undertook he was facile princeps, and in nothing that
he said or did is there evidence that he failed to appreciate what
lay before him. A visitor to the family once ventured the remark, "I
am sorry, Napoleon, for you little Corsicans. You have no Fourth of
July or Guy Fawkes Day to celebrate."

"Oh, as for that," said Napoleon, "I for one do not mind. I will
make national holidays when I get to be a man, and at present I can
get along without them. What's the use of Fourth of July when you
can shoot off fireworks everyday?"

It was a pertinent question, the visitor departed much impressed with
the boy's precocity, which was rendered doubly memorable by
Napoleon's humor in discharging fifteen pounds of wadding from his
cannon into the visitor's back as he went out of the front gate.