and the system of teaching mutes to talk was not then invented, or, at any rate, not generally understood. So I was known and pitied as the poor dumb boy. I took pleasure in dumb animals, and had for pets a silver-gray cat, a goat, and a little spaniel. One afternoon — I should be about ten years old — my father came home from his school and sitting down, laid his head on the table and began to cry. Seeing him cry, I also began to cry; I was acutely sensitive.
“‘What is the matter?’ asked my good mother.
“‘Alas!’ he said, ‘I am a murderer!’
“‘Nay, that cannot be,’ she replied.
“‘I say it is so,’ said my father. ‘I have murdered a child —