called the Trafalgar now stands, and watch the tide as it receded, and pick up anything I could find, such as bits of wood and oakum; and I would wonder at the ships which lay in the stream, and the vessels sailing up and down.  I would sometimes remain out late to look at the moon and the lights on board of the vessels passing; and then I would turn my eyes to the stars, and repeat the lines which I had heard my mother teach little Virginia to lisp: 

     “Pretty little twinkling star,
      How I wonder what you are;
      All above the earth so high,
      Like a diamond in the sky;”

and when I did stay out late I was sure of having no supper, and very often a good beating; and then Virginia would wake and cry, because my mother beat me, for we were fond of each other.  And my mother used to take Virginia on her knee, and make her say her prayers every night; but she never did so to me; and I used to hear what Virginia said, and then go into a corner and repeat it to myself.  I could not imagine why Virginia should be taught to pray and that I should not.

[Illustration:  FISHER’S ALLEY.—­Marryat, Vol.  X. p. 27.]

As I said before, my mother let lodgings, and kept the ground-floor front room for people to drink tea and smoke in; and I used to take my little stool and sit at the knees of the pensioners who came in, and hear all their stories, and try to make out what they meant, for half was to me incomprehensible; and I brought them fire for their pipes, and ran messages.  Old Ben the Whaler, as they called him, was the one who took most notice of me, and said that I should be a man one of these days, which I was very glad to hear then.  And I made a little boat for my sister, which cost me a great deal of trouble and labor; and Ben helped me to paint it, and I gave it to Virginia, and she and I were both so pleased; but when my mother saw it, she threw it into the fire, saying it was “so ungenteel,” and we both cried; and old Ben was very angry, and said something to my mother, which made her sing “High diddle diddle” for the whole day afterward.

Such are the slight reminiscences, which must content the reader, of my early existence.

When I was eight years old (about six years after his last visit), my father made his appearance; and then, for the first time, I knew that my father was alive, for I was but two years old when he left, and I remembered nothing about him, and I had never heard my mother mention his name as if he still existed.

My father came in one day very unexpectedly, for he had given no notice of his return; and it so happened that as he came in, my mother was beating me with the frying-pan, for having dipped my finger in the grease in which she had been frying some slices of bacon.  She was very angry, and as she banged me with it, Virginia was pulling at her skirts, crying and begging her to desist, “You little wretch,” cried my mother, “you’ll be just such a sea-monster as your father was—­little wulgar animal, you must put your finger into the frying-pan, must you?  There, now you’ve got it.”  So saying, she put down the frying-pan, and commenced singing as loud as she could, “Hush-a-by, baby, Pussy’s a lady.”  “Ay, now you’re vexed, I dare say,” continued she, as she walked into the back kitchen.