Providence had not made him a Justice of
the Peace, he'd have been a vagabond himself. No such kind interference
prevailed in my case. I was a vagabond from my cradle. I never could be
sent to school, alone, like other children--they always had to see me
there safe, and fetch me back again. The rambling bump monopolized my
whole head. I'm sure my god-father must have been the wandering Jew, or
a king's messenger. Here I am again, _en route_, and sorely puzzled to
know whither? There's the fellow for my trunk.

"What packet, sir?"

"Eh? What packet? The vessel at the Tower stairs?"

"Yes, sir; there are two with the steam up, the Rotterdam and the
Hamburgh."

"Which goes first?"

"Why, I think the Attwood, sir."

"Well, then, shove aboard the Attwood. Where is she for?"

"She's for Rotterdam.----He's a queer cove too," said the fellow under
his teeth, as he moved out of the room, "and don't seem to care where he
goes."

A capital lesson in life may be learned from the few moments preceding
departure from an inn. The surly waiter that always said "coming" when
he was leaving the room, and never came, now grown smiling and smirking;
the landlord expressing a hope to see you again, while he watches your
upthrown eyebrows at the exorbitancy of his bill: the boots attentively
looking from your feet to your face, and back again; the housemaid
passing and repassing a dozen times, on her way, no where, with a look
half saucy, half shy; the landlord's son, an abortion of two feet high,
a kind of family chief remembrancer, that sits on a high stool in the
bar, and always detects something you have had, that was not "put down
in the bill"--two shillings for a cab, or a "brandy and water;" a curse
upon them all; this poll-tax upon travellers is utter ruin; your bill,
compared to its dependencies, is but Falstaffs "pennyworth of bread," to
all the score for sack.

Well, here I am at last. "Take care I say! you'll upset us. Shove off,
Bill; ship your oar," splash, splash. "Bear a hand. What a noise, they
make," bang, crash, buzz; what a crowd of men in pilot coats and caps;
women in plaid shawls and big reticules, band-boxes, bags, and babies,
and what higgling for sixpences with the wherrymen.

All the places round the companion are taken by pale ladies in black
silk, with a thin man in spectacles beside them; the deck is littered
with luggage, and little groups seated thereon; some very strange young
gentlemen with man