He assured me, and he had my entire faith, that boxing was England’s natural protection from the foe.  The comfort of having one like Bob to defend our country from invasion struck me as inexpressible.  Lighted by John Thresher’s burning patriotism, I entered the book of the History of England at about the pace of a carthorse, with a huge waggon at my heels in the shape of John.  There was no moving on until he was filled.  His process of receiving historical knowledge was to fight over again the personages who did injury to our honour as a nation, then shake hands and be proud of them.  ‘For where we ain’t quite successful we’re cunning,’ he said; ’and we not being able to get rid of William the Conqueror, because he’s got a will of his own and he won’t budge, why, we takes and makes him one of ourselves; and no disgrace in that, I should hope!  He paid us a compliment, don’t you see, Master Harry? he wanted to be an Englishman.  “Can you this?” says we, sparrin’ up to him.  “Pretty middlin’,” says he, “and does it well.”  “Well then,” says we, “then you’re one of us, and we’ll beat the world”; and did so.’

John Thresher had a laborious mind; it cost him beads on his forehead to mount to these heights of meditation.  He told me once that he thought one’s country was like one’s wife:  you were born in the first, and married to the second, and had to learn all about them afterwards, ay, and make the best of them.  He recommended me to mix, strain, and throw away the sediment, for that was the trick o’ brewery.  Every puzzle that beset him in life resolved to this cheerful precept, the value of which, he said, was shown by clear brown ale, the drink of the land.  Even as a child I felt that he was peculiarly an Englishman.  Tales of injustice done on the Niger river would flush him in a heat of wrath till he cried out for fresh taxes to chastise the villains.  Yet at the sight of the beggars at his gates he groaned at the taxes existing, and enjoined me to have pity on the poor taxpayer when I lent a hand to patch the laws.  I promised him I would unreservedly, with a laugh, but with a sincere intention to legislate in a direct manner on his behalf.  He, too, though he laughed, thanked me kindly.

I was clad in black for my distant mother.  Mrs. Waddy brought down a young man from London to measure me, so that my mourning attire might be in the perfect cut of fashion.  ’The child’s papa would strip him if he saw him in a country tailor’s funeral suit,’ she said, and seemed to blow a wind of changes on me that made me sure my father had begun to stir up his part of the world.  He sent me a prayer in his own handwriting to say for my mother in heaven.  I saw it flying up between black edges whenever I shut my eyes.  Martha Thresher dosed me for liver.  Mrs. Waddy found me pale by the fireside, and prescribed iron.  Both agreed upon high-feeding, and the apothecary agreed with both in everything, which reconciled them, for both good women loved me so heartily they were near upon disputing over the medicines I was to consume.