remarried when Alfred was three months old. From the time he was a
mere baby she taught him to hate his father. Everything that went
wrong with him she told him was his father's fault. His first vivid
impression was that his father was responsible for all the wrong of
the universe.

"For seven years that went on, and then his mother died. His
stepfather did not want him. He was going to Missouri, and the boy
would be a useless expense and a bother. He made no attempt to find
a home for him; he did not even explain--he merely went away and
left him. At the age of seven the boy was turned out on the world,
after having been taught one thing--to hate his father. He stayed a
few days in the barren house, and then new tenants came and closed
the doors against him. It may have occurred to him as a little
strange that he had been sent into a world where there was no place
for him.

"When he asked the neighbours for shelter, they told him to go to
his own father and not bother strangers. He said he did not know
where his father was. They told him, and he started to walk--a
distance of fifty miles. I ask you to bear in mind, gentlemen, that
he was only seven years of age. It is the age when the average boy
is beginning the third reader, and when he is shooting marbles and
spinning tops.

"When he reached his father's house he was told at once that he was
not wanted there. The man had remarried, there were other children,
and he had no place for Alfred. He turned him away; but the
neighbours protested, and he was compelled to take him back. For
four years he lived in this home, to which he had come unbidden, and