The fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. At five months
of age he used to get into such passions that he was unable to
articulate. At six months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At
seven months he was in the constant habit of catching and kissing
the female babies. At eight months he peremptorily refused to put
his signature to the Temperance pledge. Thus he went on increasing
in iniquity, month after month, until, at the close of the first year,
he not only insisted upon wearing moustaches, but had contracted a
propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions by
bets.
Through this latter most ungentlemanly practice, the ruin which I
had predicted to Toby Dammit overtook him at last. The fashion had
"grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength," so that,
when he came to be a man, he could scarcely utter a sentence without
interlarding it with a proposition to gamble. Not that he actually
laid wagers- no. I will do my friend the justice to say that he
would as soon have laid eggs.
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