hard to estimate how much of it was the boy himself, and how much
the place the world had prepared for him. And if it was the place
prepared for him more than the boy, why was the fault not more with
the preparers of the place than with the occupant of it? The whole
thing was very confusing.

"This page," the Senator from Maxwell was saying, lifting the little
fellow to the desk, "is just eleven years of age, and he is within
three pounds of Alfred Williams's weight when he committed the
murder. I ask you, gentlemen, if this little fellow should be guilty
of a like crime to-night, to what extent would you, in reading of it
in the morning, charge him with the moral discernment which is the
first condition of moral responsibility? If Alfred Williams's story
were this boy's story, would you deplore that there had been no one
to check the childish passion, or would you say it was the inborn
instinct of the murderer? And suppose again this were Alfred
Williams at the age of eleven, would you not be willing to look into
the future and say if he spent twelve years in penitentiary and
reformatory, in which time he developed the qualities of useful and
honourable citizenship, that the ends of justice would then have
been met, and the time at hand for the world to begin the payment of
her debt?"

Senator Harrison's eyes were fixed upon the page standing on the
opposite desk. Eleven was a younger age than he had supposed. As he
looked back upon it and recalled himself when eleven years of
age--his irresponsibility, his dependence--he was unwilling to say
what would have happened if the world had turned upon him as it had
upon Alfred Williams. At eleven his greatest grievance was that the
boys at school called him "yellow-top." He remembered throwing a