thing clearly before that time. I was born on board a river
barge, and never left it, winter nor summer, till I was fully six years
old. One day the barge took the mud, which is not surprising,
considering that I was the only person on deck. I ran to the helm to
turn her head off the shore, but it was too late--there she stuck hard
and fast. My mother was below, tending my father, and he lay dying. It
was the barge's last voyage, and his too. Both had seen much service.
The barge never moved again, but went on rotting and rotting till the
owner sold her and she was broken up.

Father died that night, and a boat came and took mother and me on shore,
with father's body, and such property as we possessed--not much, I
fancy,--a kettle and pot, some plates, and knives, and cups, and a few
clothes,--we hadn't wanted furniture, and with these mother and I had to
begin the world. She said things might have been worse, for she might
have had a dozen children instead of one, and debts to pay--and she
didn't owe a farthing, which was a great comfort in her affliction.

My mother was indeed, while she lived, a very good mother to me, for she
taught me to distinguish right from wrong, to love the former and to
hate the latter. As may be supposed, she was very poor, and I was often
without a meal. I know, too, that she frequently stinted herself to
give me food. She lived on the banks of the Thames somewhere below
London, and I very soon found my way down to the mud, where I now and
then used to pick up odds and ends, bits of iron and copper, and
sometimes even coin, and chips of wood. The first my mother used to
sell, and I often got enough in the week to buy us a hearty meal; the
last served to boil our kettle when we had any food to cook in it. Few
rich people know how the poor live; our way was a strange one. My poor
mother used to work with her needle, and go out as a charwoman, and to
wash, when she could get any one to wash for, but that was seldom; and
toil as hard as she might, a difficult matter she had to pay the rent of
the little room in which we lived. She felt sorely the struggle she had
to endure with poverty, for she had seen better days--far better, I
suspect,--and was not accustomed to it. She was, I have reason to
believe, well educated--at all events, much above most persons in the
station in life she then occupied; and, young as I was, she taught me to
read, and to repeat poetry, and to sing psalm