sullen, moody. I could not meet my father with any comfort to either of
us; and though I loved my mother, and she me, that cold shadow of his
prejudice seemed to be over my intercourse with her, to chill and check
those emotions which should glow naturally when a son stands in the
presence of his mother. To be brief, I was an unhappy, solitary lad,
with sisters much older and brothers much younger than himself; cut off,
too, by reason of religion, from the society of neighbours, from school
and college. Such companions as I could have were far below me in
station, and either so servile as to foster pride, or so insolent as to
inflame it. There was Father Danvers, it's true, that excellent Jesuit
and our chaplain; and there were books. I was by nature a strong,
healthy, active boy, but was driven by sheer solitariness to be
studious. If it had not turned out so, I know not what might have become
of me, at what untimely age I might have been driven to violence, crime,
God knows what. That there was danger of some such disaster Father
Danvers was well aware. My faults, as he did not fail to remind me week
by week, were obstinacy and pride of intellect; my weaknesses, lack of
proportion and what he was pleased to call perversity, by which I
suppose he meant a disposition to accept the consequences of my own
acts. I freely admit a personal trait which will be obvious as I
proceed. Trivial as it may seem, and does, at this time of writing, I
must record an instance of it, the last I was to exhibit in England.
Never vicious, I may sincerely say convinced, rather, that women are as
far above our spiritual as they are fatally within our material reach,
it was by my conduct to a woman that I fell into a way of life which
nobody could have anticipated. In my twentieth year, in a moment of
youthful ardour, I kissed Betty Coy, our dairymaid, over the cheese-
press, and was as immediately and as utterly confounded as she was. I
remember the moment, I remember her, a buxom, fresh-coloured young
woman, rosy red, her sleeves above her elbows, her "La, Mr. Francis,