And when I would come upon my father, seated at table in these subterranean crypts, gambling with Chinese for great stakes of gold, all my outrage gave vent in the vilest cursing.

I would rise in bed, struggling against the detaining hands, and curse my father till the rafters rang.

All the inconceivable filth a child running at large in a primitive countryside may hear men utter was mine; and though I had never dared utter such oaths, they now poured from me, at the top of my lungs, as I cursed my father sitting there underground and gambling with long-haired, long-nailed Chinamen.
It is a wonder that I did not burst my heart or brain that night.

A seven-year-old child's arteries and nerve-centres are scarcely fitted to endure the terrific paroxysms that convulsed me.

No one slept in the thin, frame farm-house that night when John Barleycorn had his will of me.