infancy. As his baby-will developed he found it supreme. His nurse was
obliged to be a slave who must patiently humor every whim. He was petted
and coaxed out of his frequent fits of passion, and beguiled from his
obstinate and sulky moods by bribes. He was the eldest child and only
son, and his little sisters were taught to yield to him, right or wrong,
he lording it over them with the capricious lawlessness of an Eastern
despot. Chivalric deference to woman, and a disposition to protect and
honor her, is a necessary element of a manly character in our Western
civilization; but young Haldane was as truly an Oriental as if he had
been permitted to bluster around a Turkish harem; and those whom he
should have learned to wait upon with delicacy and tact became
subservient to his varying moods, developing that essential brutality
which mars the nature of every man who looks upon woman as an inferior
and a servant. He loved his mother, but he did not reverence and honor
her. The thought ever uppermost in his mind was, "What ought she to do
for me?" not, "What ought I to do for her?" and any effort to curb or
guide on her part was met and thwarted by passionate or obstinate
opposition from him. He loved his sisters after a fashion, because they
were his sisters; but so far from learning to think of them as those
whom it would be his natural task to cherish and protect, they were, in
his estimation, "nothing but girls," and of no account whatever where
his interests were concerned.

In the most receptive period of life the poison of selfishness and
self-love was steadily instilled into his nature. Before he had left the
nursery he had formed the habit of disregarding the wills and wishes of
others, even when his childish conscience told him that he was decidedly
in the wrong. When he snatched his sisters' playthings they cried in
vain, and found no redress. The mother made peace by smoothing over
matters, and promising the little girls something else.