The Beginning
• 'In the days of King Alfred...'
• Widow indulged only son Jack to a fault.
• Jacks follies don't owe to his bad disposition but that his mother had never checked him.
• One day Jacks mother has no money to purchase food for another day, and must sell her cow. In distress she reproached Jack for the first time 'you have brought me beggary and ruin'