Two or three times he whipped me, but no more severely than was the custom among parents.

Other little boys were whipped just as hard, and still were not afraid of their fathers.

I think now that I was afraid of him because my mother was.

I can not tell how he looked then, except that he was a tall stooped man with a yellowish beard all over his face and talked in a sort of whine to others, and in a sharp domineering way to my mother.

To me he scarcely ever spoke at all.