e that I conceived
the original and desperate project of running away and going to sea. At
that time I enjoyed the proud privilege of a personal acquaintance with
the Siamese Twins, and was the envied holder of a season ticket to the
Museum, where they exhibited their attractive duplicity. It was an
essential part of my preparations to procure from the amiable Chang-Eng
a letter of introduction to their ingenious mother, who, I was told, was
in the duck-fishing line at Bangkok. Of course, I confided my plan to
Aunt Judy; and, although she opposed it with extra prayers of peculiar
length and strength, and finally succeeded in dissuading me from it, I
am by no means certain that she would not have connived at my flight,
rather than betray my confidence or consent to my punishment.

Those were the days of the _Morus multicaulis_ mania, and I embarked
with spirit in the silk-worm business. The original capital upon which I
erected the enterprise was furnished from the surplus of Aunt Judy's
wages. It was in the first silk dress that should come of all those
moths and eggs and wriggling spinners and cocoons that she invested with
such sanguine cheerfulness; and although she never got her money back in
that form,--owing to the unfortunate exhaustion of my mulberry-leaves
and the refusal of my worms to spin silk from tea, which, they being of
pure Chinese stock, I thought very unreasonable,--she conceived that she
reaped abundant returns in her share of my happy enthusiasm, while it
lasted; and when I wept over the famine-stricken forms of my operatives,
she said, "Never mind, honey; dey was an awful litter anyhow, and I
spec' dey was only de or'nary caterpillar poor trash, after all, else
dey 'd a-kep' goin' on dat tea; fur 't was de rale high-price Chany
kind, sure 's ye 'r born."

It was a striking oddness in the dear old soul, that, whilst in her
hours of familiar ease she indulged in the homely lingo of her tribe, in
her "company talk" she displayed a graver propriety of language, and in
her prayers was always fluent, forcible, and correct.

The watchful tenderness with which I loved my gentle, childlike father
was the most interesting of the many secrets that my heart shared only
with Aunt Judy's. When I was twelve years old, he fell into a touching
despondency, caused by certain reverses in his business and the
unremitting anxieties consequent upon them. So intense and sensitive was
my magnetic sympathy with him, that