e, 81 pounds, 18 shillings
per annum, he always preferred knocking down, or seeing knocked down,
the nine pins, to the being placed upon a narrow plank, toeing a chalked
line. This was not a line of conduct that he actually chalked out for
himself; only it so happened that, when he was settled at Lambeth, on
the third day he went out to look after work, and going down Stangate
Street, he turned up Cut-throat Lane, and, after passing all the
turnstiles, he arrived at the Two Jolly Sawyers, himself making a third.
In his search for employment, he found it impossible, for the space of
a whole month, to get any further.

But he was not long permitted to be the ascendant spirit among the top
and bottom men. Whether it be that Mrs Brandon overrated her powers of
affording sustenance, or that I had suffered through the inclemency of
the weather in my three journeys on my natal day, or whether that I was
naturally delicate, or perhaps all these causes contributing to it, I
fell into a very sickly state, and, before a third month had elapsed, I
was forced to another migration.

Though no one appeared, both myself and Mrs Brandon were continually
watched, and a very superior sort of surgeon in the neighbourhood of
Lambeth, from the second day of my arrival there, found some pretence or
another to get introduced to my nurse, and took a violent liking to the
little, puny, wailing piece of mortality, myself. I was about this time
so exceedingly small, that though at the risk of being puerile, I cannot
help recording that Joseph Brandon immersed me, all excepting my head,
in a quart pot. No one but a Joe Brandon, or a top sawyer, could have
had so filthy an idea. I have never been told whether the pot contained
any drainings, but I must attribute to this ill-advised act a most
plebeian fondness that I have for strong beer, and which seems to be,
even in these days of French manners and French wines, unconquerable.

My health now became so precarious, that a letter arrived, signed simply
E.R., ordering that I should be immediately baptised, and five pounds
were enclosed for the expenses. The letter stated that two decent
persons should be found by Mrs Brandon to be my sponsors, and that a
female would appear on such a day, at such an hour, at Lambeth Church,
to act as my godmother. That I was to be christened Ralph Rattlin, and,
if I survived, I was to pass for their own child till further orders,
and Ralph Rattlin Brandon we