REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD

During my visits to Barking, I used to be my grandmother’s bedfellow.  The dinner hour being as early as two o’clock, she had a regular supper, which was served up in her own sleeping-room; and immediately after finishing it, she went to bed.  Of her supper I was not permitted to partake, nor was the privation a matter of much regret.  I had what I preferred—­a portion of gooseberry pie; hers was a scrag of mutton, boiled with parsley and butter.  I do not remember any variety.

My amusements consisted in building houses with old cards, and sometimes playing at ‘Beat the knave out of doors’ with my grandmother.  My time of going to bed was perhaps an hour before hers; but by way of preparation, I never failed to receive her blessing.  Previous to the ceremony, I underwent a catechetical examination, of which one of the questions was, “Who were the children that were saved in the fiery furnace?” Answer, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.”  But as the examination frequently got no farther, the word Abednego got associated in my mind with very agreeable ideas, and it ran through my ears like “Shadrach, Meshach, and To-bed-we-go,” in a sort of pleasant confusion, which is not yet removed.  As I grew in years, I became a fit receptacle for some of my grandmother’s communications, among which the state of her family and the days of her youth were most prominent.

There hung on the wall, perpetually in view, a sampler, the produce of the industry and ingenuity of her mother or her grandmother, of which the subject-matter was the most important of all theologico-human incidents, the fall of man in Paradise.  There was Adam—­there was Eve—­and there was the serpent.  In these there was much to interest and amuse me.  One thing alone puzzled me; it was the forbidden fruit.  The size was enormous.  It was larger than that species of the genus Orangeum which goes by the name of “the forbidden fruit” in some of our West India settlements.  Its size was not less than that of the outer shell of a cocoanut.  All the rest of the objects were as usual in plano; this was in alto, indeed in altissimo rilievo. What to make of it, at a time when my mind was unable to distinguish fictions from realities, I knew not.  The recollection is strong in me of the mystery it seemed to be.  My grandmother promised me the sampler after her death as a legacy, and the promise was no small gratification; but the promise, with many other promises of jewels and gold coins, was productive of nothing but disappointment.  Her death took place when I was at Oxford.  My father went down; and without consulting me, or giving the slightest intimation of his intention, let the house, and sold to the tenant almost everything that was in it.  It was doing as he was wont to do, notwithstanding his undoubted affection for me.  In the same way he sold the estate he had given to me as a provision on the occasion of his second marriage.  In the mass went some music-books which I had borrowed of Mrs. Browne.  Not long after, she desired them to be returned.  I stood before her like a defenseless culprit, conscious of my inability to make restitution; and at the same time, such was my state of mental weakness that I knew not what to say for apology or defense.