of until my eleventh year. No one dared to deny me anything, for my mother was always on my side, as I was never in her opinion in the wrong. But as I grew up, I found the misfortune of it.

My poor mother died soon after I reached my eleventh year, and I soon found a great difference; for I had acquired in the few years I had lived a fondness for my own way, which no one seemed now inclined to yield to me.

"My father was an austere man, and I only liked him for his fondness to my poor mother. He often told her, in my hearing, that she was doing her best to make a fool of me; but her constant answer was, 'He is so young-he will be better as he gets older.'

"School was a restraint I did not approve of, so that at the age of twelve years, I was just learning to read. As my father now insisted on sending me with my brothers, I got on very well after the first, as I began to like learning; so in a short time, did a great deal.

"My brothers, with the exception of the next one to me, were like my father, proud,

and cruel; Jim was like my mother, kind and affectionate. My father had in early life been a sailor, but he had taken so great a dislike to everything nautical, that he would not suffer any of us even to have playthings of that kind, and threatened us with his severest displeasure if we ever went into a boat, except to cross the ferry.

"As the 'rule of contrary,' was always a greater favourite with me than the Rule of Three,' I lost no time, after hearing my father one day reprove me for my inclination that way, in going down to the quay; where, finding a boat belonging to a merchant vessel, made fast to a ring bolt on the landing-place, I jumped into it, and casting off the painter, shoved out into the creek to have a little amusement.

"I liked the novelty very much, but found it was much easier to get away than to get back again, altho' I did my best endeavour to do so, especially as the boy, in whose care the boat was left, was calling upon me rather angrily to return. The tide was running out sufficiently strong to be carrying me away very fast, and if

a waterman, passing at the time, had not taken me in tow, and carried me back to the landingplace, I should very quickly have been stuck in the mud.

"As soon as I got out of the boat, the boy

you are the boy I mean, Charley-very unceremoniously gave me a thump at the side of the head; and as I was getting to be fourteen years of age, and a sturdy boy, I returned the compliment. You were some years older, and much stronger, but you remember we had a sharp, although short round, which ended in my rolling off the quay into the water, where I found myself striking out merrily,

"You soon repented of what you had done, for I remember it was you who pulled me out again; and although I was willing to renew the combat in the boat, you with great forbearance declined it.

"I was landed and walked home, when my father, not thinking my ducking, and the black eye I received, a sufficient punishment for my neglect of his injunctions, gave me a very severe beating, as soon as I had changed my clothes.

But what was still more galling to me, was that, my eldest brother, who was a clerk in a merchant's office, laughed at me, and taunted me with the pleasantness of my excursion. Jim took my part; but I thought myself able to take my own, and I ventured to reply to my elder brother's ridicule, by calling him a puppy, and a fool: this took place in the drawing-room, after my father had left.

"My brother, feeling the justice of the epithets I bestowed upon him, began beating me with his cane: my brothers looking on. My rage was at its greatest pitch, and so soon as I was released from the posture in which he had confined me, I flew to the first moveable that I could lift, which happened to be a small glass globe, containing gold and silver fish. This I lifted with both hands, and threw it right at him: the vessel struck his head, and falling on the floor, was shivered into a thousand pieces, giving the fish and the water full liberty to go where they pleased.

"My father entered just as I had performed this feat, and instead of inquiring into the cir

cumstances, and thrashing my brother, he sentenced me to solitary confinement in my bedroom. It appeared to me that my father's conduct was unnatural and cruel; and I determined to free myself, in some way or other, from a repetition of it.

So I

"I sat down when I was locked into my prison, and coolly concerted in my own mind a scheme of acting, in which I promised myself a great deal of revenge and happiness. waited until the clock struck eleven, and then knowing the household to be all asleep, I unlaced my bed sacking, and first trying the length out of the window, I made one end of it fast to the bed-post, and lowered myself, with a bravery I knew not I possessed, out of the window four stories high into the garden; receiving no other damage than knocking the skin off my knuckles.

"I had then to scale a wall, twelve feet high, which I accomplished; and having only forgotten a hat, I made all possible haste to the quay. Just as I reached that place, a vessel was in the act of hauling off, to go down the creek with the tide. I got on board unperceived, and