It
is curious to notice his revengeful feeling against the false ones,--
hidden from himself, however, under the guise of religious interest, and
desire that they may be cured of their follies.
A little boy named Joe, who haunts about the bar-room and the stoop, four
years old, in a thin, short jacket, and full-breeched trousers, and bare
feet. The men tease him, and put quids of tobacco in his mouth, under
pretence of giving him a fig; and he gets curaged, and utters a peculiar,
sharp, spiteful cry, and strikes at them with a stick, to their great
mirth. He is always in trouble, yet will not keep away. They despatch
him with two or three cents to buy candy and nuts and raisins. They set
him down in a niche of the door, and tell him to remain there a day and a
half: he sits down very demurely, as if he meant to fulfil his penance;
but a moment after, behold! there is little Joe capering across the
street to join two or three boys who are playing in a wagon. Take this
boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country roue, to spend a wild and
brutal youth, ten years of his prime in the State Prison, and his old age
in the poorhouse.
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