and other nice things in a corner, so privately that I was never found out.  Once, I remember, I had a huge apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats’-heads.  I concealed this all day under my pillow; and at night, but not before I had ascertained that my bed-fellow was sound asleep,—­which I did by pinching him rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to perceive no more than a dead person, though once or twice he made a motion as if he would turn, which frightened me,—­I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to work upon my apple; and though it was as big as an ordinary man’s two fists, I made shift to get through it before it was time to get up.  And a more delicious feast I never made,—­thinking all night what a good parent I had (I mean my father) to send me so many nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend in the world to send him anything nice; and thinking of his desolate condition, I munched and munched as silently as I could, that I might not set him a-longing, if he overheard me.  And yet, for all this considerateness and attention to other people’s feelings; I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows; which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of the value of a halfpenny, or told stories of them to their master, as some little lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the services in my power that were consistent with my own well-doing.  I think nobody can be expected to go further than that.—­But I am detaining my reader too long in the recording of my juvenile days.  It is time that I should go forward to a season when it became natural that I should have some thoughts of marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world.  Nevertheless, my reflections on what I may call the boyish period of my life may have their use to some readers.  It is pleasant to trace the man in the boy, to observe shoots of generosity in those young years, and to watch the progress of liberal sentiments, and what I may call a genteel way of thinking, which is discernible in some children at a very early age, and usually lays the foundation of all that is praiseworthy in the manly character afterwards.

With the warmest inclinations towards that way of life, and a serious conviction of its superior advantages over a single one, it has been the strange infelicity of my lot never to have entered into the respectable estate of matrimony.  Yet I was once very near it.  I courted a young woman in my twenty-seventh year,—­for so early I began to feel symptoms of the tender passion!  She was well to do in the world, as they call it, but yet not such a fortune as, all things considered, perhaps I might have pretended to.  It was not my own choice altogether; but my mother very strongly pressed me to it.  She was always putting it to me, that I “had comings-in sufficient,—­that I need not stand upon a portion”; though the young woman, to do her justice,