One scene between my mother and me may serve as a specimen for all.  I would come home with my trousers tucked up, and my high-lows unlaced and full of water, sucking every time that I lifted up my leg, and marking the white sanded floor of the front room, as I proceeded through it to the back kitchen.  My mother would come downstairs, and perceiving the marks I had left, would get angry, and as usual commence singing—­

     “’A frog he would a-wooing go,
     Heigho, says Rowly.’

“I see here’s that little wretch been here—­

     “’Whether his mother would let him or no,
     Heigho, says Rowly.’

“I’ll rowly him with the rolling-pin when I get hold of him.  He’s worse than that beastly water-spaniel of Sir Hercules’, who used to shake himself over my best cambric muslin.  Well, we’ll see.  He’ll be wanting his dinner; I only wish he may get it.

     “’Little Jack Horner sat in a corner,
     Eating his Christmas pie;
     He put in his thumb and pull’d out a plum,
     And cried, What a good boy am I!’

“‘Good boy am I!’ good-for-nothing brat, just like his father.  Oh, dear!—­if I could but get rid of him!

     “’There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
     She’d so many children she didn’t know what to do;
     She gave them some broth without any bread,
     She whipped them all round, and sent them to bed.’

“And if I don’t whip him, it’s my fault, that’s all.  Virginia, my love, don’t spit—­that’s not genteel.  It’s only sailors and Yankees who spit.  Nasty little brute!  Oh! here you are, are you?” cried my mother, as I entered.  “Do you see what a dirty mess you have made, you little ungrateful animal?  Take that, and that, and that,” continued she, running the wet bristles of the long broom into my face, with sufficient force to make my nose bleed.  I stood the first push, and the second; but the third roused my indignation—­and I caught hold of the end of the broom toward me, and tried to force it out of her hands.  It was push against push, for I was very strong—­she, screaming as loud as she could, as she tried to wrest the broom from my clutches—­I, shoving at her with all my force—­like Punch and the devil at the two ends of the stick.  At last, after she had held me in a corner for half a minute, I made a rush upon her, drove her right to the opposite corner, so that the end of the handle gave her a severe poke in the body, which made her give up the contest, and exclaim as soon as she recovered her breath—­“Oh! you nasty, ungrateful, ungenteel brute!  You little viper!  Is that the way you treat your mother—­and nearly kill her?  Oh, dear me!”

“Why don’t you leave me alone, then? you never beats Jenny.”

“Who’s Jenny, you wicked good-for-nothing boy? you mean your sister Virginia.  Well, you’ll have no dinner, I can tell you.”

I put my hand in my pocket, took out a sixpence which I had received, and held it up between my thumb and finger.  “Won’t I?”