DEAR SIR,--I read your account of this unfortunate being, and his
forlorn piece of self-history, with that smile of half-interest which
the annals of insignificance excite, till I came to where he says, "I
was bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, and teacher
of languages and mathematics," etc.; when I started as one does on the
recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This, then,
was that Starkey of whom I have heard my sister relate so many pleasant
anecdotes, and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to remember.
For nearly fifty years she had lost all sight of him; and, behold! the
gentle usher of her youth, grown into an aged beggar, dubbed with an
opprobrious title to which he had no pretensions, an object and a
May-game! To what base purposes may we not return! What may not have
been the meek creature's sufferings, what his wanderings, before he
finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old hospitaller of
the almonry of Newcastle? And is poor Starkey dead?

I was a scholar of that "eminent writer" that he speaks of; but Starkey
had quitted the school about a year before I came to it. Still the odor
of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder
pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discolored,
dingy garden, in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's
Buildings. It is still a school,--though the main prop, alas! has fallen
so ingloriously,--and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the
lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven knows what
"languages" were taught in it then! I am sure that neither my sister nor
myself brought any out of it but a little of our native English. By
"mathematics," reader, must be understood "cyphering." It was, in fact,
a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys
in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the
girls, our sisters, etc., in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under
Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a
respectable singer and performer at Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to
Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat,
corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him,
and that peculiar mild tone--especially while he was inflicting
punishment--which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest
looks and gestu