was an
old sailor, and, with a knife which was attached to a white lanyard,
he could carve delightful boats (thoroughly seaworthy in a wash-hand
basin) out of ordinary sticks of firewood. It is to be noted, by the
way, a thing I never thought of till this moment, that these same
sticks and bundles of firewood have a peculiarly distinctive smell of
their own. It is the smell of a certain kind of grocer's shop whose
proprietor, for some esoteric reason, calls himself an 'Italian
warehouse-man.' In later life I occasionally visited such a shop,
between Fleet Street and the river, when I had rooms in that locality.

Boat-building figured largely in that visit to Amelia's parents. (The
girl had a mother; large, flaccid, and, on this occasion, partly
dissolved in tears.) But the episode immediately preceding our
departure is what overshadowed everything else for me that day, and
for several subsequent nights. Amelia and the tearful mother took me
up the dark little stairway, and introduced me to Death. They showed
me Amelia's sister, Jinny, who died (of consumption, I believe) on the
day before our visit. I still can see the alabaster white face, with
its pronounced vein-markings; the straight, thin form, outlined
beneath a sheet, in that tiny, low-ceiled, airless garret. What a
picture to place before an infant on a sunny Sunday afternoon! It
might be supposed that I had asked to see it, for I remember Amelia
saying, as one about to give a child a treat:

'Now, mind, Master Nicholas, you're to be a very good boy, and you're
not to say a word about it to any one.'

But, no, I do not think I can have desired the experience, for to this
day I cherish a lively recollection of the agony of sick horror which
swam over me when, in obedience to instructions given, I suffered my
lips to touch the marble-like face of the dead girl.

How strange is that unquestioning obedience of childhood! Recognition
of it might well give pause to careless instructors of youth. The kiss
meant torture to me, in anticipation and in fact. But I was bidden,
and never dreamed of refusing to obey. No doubt, there was also at
work in me some dim sort of infantile delicacy. This was an occasion
upon which a gentleman could have no choice....

Ah, well, I believe Amelia was a dear good soul, and I am sure I hope
she married well, and lived happily ever after. I have no recollection
whatever of how or when she drifted out of my life. But the visit to
Ji