s fact, I was often found in the
garden addressing the cabbages, which in my youthful fancy
represented the congregation, and on Sunday evenings when my parents
were at chapel, a habit of mine was to rear a chair upside down
against the wall, get within the bars of my chair-pulpit, and address
my two sisters.

Strange to say, running parallel to this habit of preaching was a
fond love for the water, and it may be said in a literal sense that I
was as fond of it as a duck. I am told that when an infant under the
care of any person other than my mother, nothing in the world would
quiet me except a bowl of water and a sponge to play with. Naturally
this liking developed, as you will see. Separated by a thick wall
from the Millbrook lake is a large mill-pond, which, when emptied of
water, is very muddy. How we, as schoolboys, delighted to roll in
this mud (for what is dirty to a school-boy?) and then jump over the
other side of the wall and swim in the wake of the paddle-wheel
steamer! On one occasion, the Vicar, who from the vicarage could
watch our habits, observed that during the day I had bathed nine
times, which thing, he gave my parents to understand, was very
weakening. "Twice a day," said he, "is often enough." I think so too,
now, but did not then.

On Saturdays a party of us boys would wend our way to the Whitsands
for the purpose of bathing in the open sea. This we regarded as
something totally different from that of our daily bathings in the
lake; and in point of fact it was, for the water was purer and
fresher, and soft golden sands took the place of mud strewed with
broken pieces of glass and other refuse. Oh! how we loved to rush
headlong through the giant waves which came bounding in from seaward.
How much better was this than learning a proposition of Euclid! The
boy who swam furthest out to sea was looked upon as the hero of the
hour, indeed through the whole week, until Saturday came again, when
some other boy would endeavour to swim beyond the limit of the
previous week. In this way we instituted a competition between
ourselves in the art of swimming.

One Saturday the scene changed, for after the delight of bathing came
misery; after joy came pain. It is ever so. The shadow is always with
the light. After dressing ourselves, we made a hasty retreat over the
rocks, as it had now begun to rain, when lo! my foot was caught in a
crevice. I wriggled it to and fro, with the hope of extricating it,
but in