however, not be correct. It seems as if it had always been my fate to
represent and combine the hardest and sharpest contrasts. My outer life
was really in complete contrast with my inner. I had grown up without a
mother; my physical education had been neglected, and in consequence I
had acquired many a bad habit. I always liked to be doing something or
another, but in my clumsy way I made mistakes as to choice of materials,
of time, and of place, and thus often incurred the severe displeasure of
my parents. I felt this, being of a sensitive disposition, more keenly
and more persistently than my parents; the more so as I felt myself
generally to blame in form rather than in substance, and in my inmost
heart I could see there was a point of view from whence my conduct would
seem, in substance at all events, not altogether wrong, still less
blameworthy. The motives assigned to my actions were not those which
actuated me, so far as I could tell; and the consciousness of being
misjudged made me really what I had been believed to be before, a
thoroughly naughty boy. Out of fear of punishment I hid even the most
harmless actions, and when I was questioned I made untruthful answers.

In short, I was set down as wicked, and my father, who had not always
time to investigate the justice of the accusations against me,
remembered only the facts as they were represented to him. My neglected
childhood called forth the ridicule of others; when playing with my
step-brother, I was always, according to my mother, the cause of
anything that went wrong. As the mind of my parents turned more and more
away from me, so on my side my life became more and more separated from
theirs; and I was abandoned to the society of people who, if my
disposition had not been so thoroughly healthy, might have injured me
even more than they did. I longed to escape from this unhappy state of
things; and I considered my elder brothers fortunate in being all of
them away from home. Just at this melancholy time came home my eldest