________________________________________________
_ NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon
it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that
is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant
home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of father's
Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different
in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I
recollect, that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used
tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-
tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will
be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and
that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-
pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of
bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her
eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and
hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a
three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would
pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money
home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my
ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces),
would feint and dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether I
cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for
that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner
when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
would still say, 'O, you worldly little devil!' And the sting of
it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.
Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be
locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my
worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly
yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death
of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on
whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole
courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil,
I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into
cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, - walking
over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of
houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change
came down even as low as that, - so will it mount to any height on
which a human creature can perch, - and brought other changes with
it.
We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest
corner, which we called 'the bed.' For three days mother lay upon
it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had
ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange
sound frightened me. It frightened father too; and we took it by
turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side
to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell
a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
both water, and they both died. _
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