“As I grew older, my mother told me fairy-tales to account for the absence of my father. She died when I was sixteen, and before she died she told me the truth. She begged me to promise to go to him, and said that I should be happy with him. But I would not promise. I was sixteen then, and very proud. What my mother had told me made me hate and despise my father. I left my dead mother’s side hating him; I had a loathing for him which words couldn’t express. She had omitted to tell me his real name; I never asked her, and I was glad not to know it. In speaking of him, of course she always said ‘your father’, ‘your father’, and she died before she got quite to the end of her story. I buried my mother, and then I was determined to disappear. My father might search, but he should never find me. The thought that he would