sherman's cottage, and
many an hour have I sat by the kitchen fire whilst she told me strange
stories of the mighty ocean, and ever and anon she would snatch the
shell from the mantelpiece and clap it to my ear, crying, 'There,
child, you couldn't hear it plainer than that. It's the very moral!'

"When Kitty gave me that shell for my very own, I felt that life had
little more to offer. I held it to every ear in the house, including
the cat's; and, seeing Dick the sexton's son go by with an armful of
straw to stuff Guy Fawkes, I ran out, and in my anxiety to make him
share the treat, and learn what the sea is like, I clapped the shell
to his ear so smartly and unexpectedly, that he, thinking me to have
struck him, knocked me down then and there with his bundle of straw.
When he understood the rights of the case, he begged my pardon
handsomely, and gave me two whole treacle-sticks and part of a third
out of his breeches-pocket, in return for which I forgave him freely,
and promised to let him hear the sea roar on every Saturday
half-holiday till farther notice.

"And speaking of Dick and the straw reminds me that my birthday falls
on the fifth of November. From this it came about that I always had to
bear a good many jokes about being burnt as a Guy Fawkes; but, on the
other hand, I was allowed to make a small bonfire of my own, and to
have eight potatoes to roast therein, and eight-pennyworth of crackers
to let off in the evening. A potato and a pennyworth of crackers for
every year of my life.

"On this eighth birthday, having got all the above-named gifts, I
cried, in the fulness of my heart, 'There never was such a day!' And
yet there was more to come, for the evening coach brought me a parcel,
and the parcel was my godmother's picture-book.

"My godmother was a gentlewoman of small means; but she was
accomplished. She could make very spirited sketches, and knew how to
colour them after they were outlined and shaded in Indian ink. She
had a pleasant talent for versifying. She was very industrious. I have
it from her own lips that she copied the figures in my picture-book
from prints in several different houses at which she visited. They
were fancy portraits of characters, most of which were familiar to my
mind. There were Guy Fawkes, Punch, his then Majesty the King, Bogy,
the Man in the Moon, the Clerk of the Weather Office, a Dunce, and Old
Father Christmas. Beneath each sketch was a stanza of my godmother's
ow