lind. So was Nelson you'll say: but every man isn't a Nelson, my
boy.

'And though I might think I could con or fight a ship as well as
ever, I can't say other folk who didn't know me were wrong for
not agreeing with me. Would you, now Jack, appoint a lame and
blind man to command your ship, if you had one?' But he left off
applying for work as soon as he was fifty, (I just remember the
time), for he began to doubt then whether he was quite so fit to
command a vessel as a younger man; and, though he had a much
better chance after that of getting a ship (for William IV came
to the throne, who knew all about him), he never went near the
Admiralty again. 'God forbid,' he said, 'that his Majesty should
take me if there's a better man to be had.'

"But I have forgotten to tell you how I came into the world, and
am telling you my father's story instead of my own. You seem to
like hearing about it though, and you can't understand one
without the other. However, when my father was made commander, he
married, and bought, with his prize-money and savings, a cottage
and piece of land, in a village on the south coast, where he left
his wife when he went on his last voyage. They had waited some
years, for neither of them had any money; but there never were
two people who wanted it less, or did more good without it to all
who came near them. They had a hard time of it too, for my father
had to go on half-pay; and a commander's half-pay isn't much to
live upon and keep a family. For they had a family; three besides
me; but they are all gone. And my mother, too; she died when I
was quite a boy, and left him and me alone; and since then I have
never known what a woman's love is, for I have no near relations;
and a man with such prospects as mine had better keep down
all--However, there's no need to go into any notion; I won't
wander any more if I can help it.

"I know my father was very poor when my mother died, and I think
(though he never told me so) that he had mortgaged our cottage,
and was very near having to sell it at one time. The expenses of
my mother's illness had been very heavy; I know a good deal of
the best furniture was sold--all, indeed except a handsome arm
chair and a little work table of my mother's. She used to sit in
the chair, in her last illness, on our lawn, and watch the
sunsets. And he sat by her, and watched her, and sometimes read
the Bible to her; while I played about with a big black dog we
had then,