are, as I have frequently noticed in after-life, but too
often in the habit of undervaluing and making light of.

At the time of my birth, my father was abroad on service in the exercise
of his profession, having no private fortune or other resources which
would have enabled him to live at home on his half-pay; and on my
mother's early death I was taken charge of at his request by his
brother, a man considerably older than himself, with a wife and family
of his own. Of course, while my father lived he made over a portion of
the _honorarium_ given him by a grateful country in return for exposing
his life at the call of duty; but, on his suddenly succumbing to the
effects of a murderous slug shot through the lungs, fired from the old
flint musket of one of the King of Abarri's adherents, in the
pestilential African stream up which he had gone to demolish a native
stronghold that had defied the fetish of the British flag, this
allowance for my support ceased, and I was thenceforth left a poor
pensioner on my uncle's bounty. I will do my relative the justice of
stating that I do not believe he would have grudged the extra expense I
entailed on his already well-populated household, had it not been for my
aunt. This lady, however, affectionately regarded me as an interloper
from the very first; and I have a vivid memory, even now, of the
aggravating way she had of talking about the food I ate and the clothes
I wore out--although, goodness knows, my tailor's bill could not have
amounted to much in those days, as I was invariably made the residuary
legatee of my elder cousin Ralph's cast-off jackets and trousers, which,
when pretty nearly dilapidated, used to be made over to my use, after
being first cut down by my Aunt Matilda's own fair hands to suit my more
juvenile proportions.

To make a long story short, I could plainly perceive, young as I was,
long before I had cut my eye teeth, that I was looked upon as an
uncalled-for incumbrance by my relatives, senior and junior alike--Aunt
Matilda never being dissuaded, by any fear of hurting my feelings, from
continually speaking of my pauper condition, and throwing it, as it
were, in my face, wondering in her hypocritical way what special sin she
could have committed that she should thus be afflicted in having to
"deny her own children their rightful bread," that I, miserable orphan,
might "wax fat and kick," as she said; while my cousins, who were a very
mean lot, dutifully