ho had been called
young, but was now old Fulcher--wanted me to go out and commit larcenies
with him; but I told him that I would have nothing more to do with
thieving, having seen the ill effects of it, and that I should leave them
in the morning. Old Fulcher begged me to think better of it, and his
mother joined with him. They offered, if I would stay, to give me Mary
Fulcher as a mort, till she and I were old enough to be regularly
married, she being the daughter of the one and the sister of the other. I
liked the girl very well, for she had been always civil to me, and had a
fair complexion and nice red hair, both of which I like, being a bit of a
black myself; but I refused, being determined to see something more of
the world than I could hope to do with the Fulchers, and, moreover, to
live honestly, which I could never do along with them. So the next
morning I left them: I was, as I said before, quite determined upon an
honest livelihood, and I soon found one. He is a great fool who is ever
dishonest in England. Any person who has any natural gift, and everybody
has some natural gift, is sure of finding encouragement in this noble
country of ours, provided he will but exhibit it. I had not walked more
than three miles before I came to a wonderfully high church steeple,
which stood close by the road; I looked at the steeple, and going to a
heap of smooth pebbles which lay by the roadside, I took up some, and
then went into the churchyard, and placing myself just below the tower,
my right foot resting on a ledge about two foot from the ground, I, with
my left hand--being a left-handed person, do you see--flung or chucked up
a stone, which lighting on the top of the steeple, which was at least a
hundred and fifty feet high, did there remain. After repeating this feat
two or three times, I 'hulled' up a stone, which went clean over the
tower, and then one--my right foot still on the ledge--which, rising at
least five yards above the steeple, did fall down just at my feet.
Without knowing it, I was showing off my gift to others besides myself,
doing what, perhaps, not five men in England could do. Two men, who were
passing by, stopped and looked at my proceedings, and when I had done
flinging came into the churchyard, and, after paying me a compliment on
what they had seen me do, proposed that I should join company with them;
I asked them who they were, and they told me. The one was Hopping Ned
and the other Bi