- that I am a misshapen, deformed old man.

I have never been made a misanthrope by this cause. I have never
been stung by any insult, nor wounded by any jest upon my crooked
figure. As a child I was melancholy and timid, but that was
because the gentle consideration paid to my misfortune sunk deep
into my spirit and made me sad, even in those early days. I was
but a very young creature when my poor mother died, and yet I
remember that often when I hung around her neck, and oftener still
when I played about the room before her, she would catch me to her
bosom, and bursting into tears, would soothe me with every term of
fondness and affection. God knows I was a happy child at those
times, - happy to nestle in her breast, - happy to weep when she
did, - happy in not knowing why.

These occasions are so strongly impressed upon my memory, that they
seem to have occupied whole years. I had numbered very, very few
when they ceased for ever, but before then their meaning had been
revealed to me.

I do not know whether all children are imbued with a quick
perception of childish grace and beauty, and a strong love for it,
but I was. I had no thought that I remember, either that I
possessed it myself or that I lacked it, but I admired it with an
intensity that I cannot describe. A little knot of playmates -
they must have been beautiful, for I see them now - were clustered
one day round my mother's knee in eager admiration of some picture
representing a group of infant angels, which she held in her hand.
Whose the picture was, whether it was familiar to me or otherwise,
or how all the children came to be there, I forget; I have some dim