wasted by old age and famine to a mere skeleton, and even in death
still crushed down with that awful burden he had carried for so many
years. Thus, consistent to the end, and with his secret untold to any
sympathetic human soul, perished poor old Con-stair Lo-vair, the
strangest of all strange beings I have met with in my journey through
life.




CHAPTER II

MY NEW HOME

We quit our old home--A winter day journey--Aspect of the country--Our
new home--A prisoner in the barn--The plantation--A paradise of rats--
An evening scene--The people of the house--A beggar on horseback--Mr.
Trigg our schoolmaster--His double nature--Impersonates an old woman--
Reading Dickens--Mr. Trigg degenerates--Once more a homeless wanderer
on the great plain.



The incidents and impressions recorded in the preceding chapter
relate, as I have said, to the last year or two of my five years of
life in the place of my birth. Further back my memory refuses to take
me. Some wonderful persons go back to their second or even their first
year; I can't, and could only tell from hearsay what I was and did up
to the age of three. According to all accounts, the clouds of glory I
brought into the world--a habit of smiling at everything I looked at