He was born in the back parts
of the State of New York; his father a farmer, who
became subsequently bankrupt and went West. The lawyer
and money-lender who had ruined this poor family seems
to have conceived in the end a feeling of remorse; he
turned the father out indeed, but he offered, in
compensation, to charge himself with one of the sons:
and Harry, the fifth child, and already sickly, was
chosen to be left behind. He made himself useful in
the office: picked up the scattered rudiments of an
education; read right and left; attended and debated at
the Young Men's Christian Association; and in all his
early years was the model for a good story-book. His
landlady's daughter was his bane. He showed me her
photograph; she was a big, handsome, dashing, dressy,
vulgar hussy, without character, without tenderness,
without mind, and (as the result proved) without
virtue. The sickly and timid boy was in the house; he
was handy; when she was otherwise unoccupied, she used
and played with him--Romeo and Cressida; till in that
dreary life of a poor boy in a country town, she grew
to be the light of his days and the subject of his
dreams.
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