George Silverman's Explanation
IT happened in this wise -
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without descrying any
hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an
abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very
difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not
see my way to a better.
IT happened in THIS wise -
But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former opening, I find they are
the self-same words repeated. This is the more surprising to me, because I employ them
in quite a new connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the
commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference to another of an
entirely different nature, dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will
make a third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that it is not my design
to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they be of head or heart.
NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The
natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was a cellar in
Preston. I recollect the sound of father's Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above,
as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect,
that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet
having a good or an ill- tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will be seen that I was timid,
and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least
of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high- pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by
the compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes
about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his
shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate,
until she would pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money home.
Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers
