ld fain have carried myself when I grew up to be a man. I
guessed, however, that money and many other considerations might make it
impossible for me to be a midshipman; but I had heard of boys being
apprenticed to merchant-vessels, and I resolved to ask my father if he
would so apprentice me.

He refused, and he accompanied his refusal with an unfavourable
commentary on my character and conduct, which was not the less bitter
because the accusations were chiefly general.

This sudden fancy for the sea--well, if it were not a sudden fancy, but
a dream of my life, what a painful instance it afforded of my habitual
want of frankness!--This long-concealed project which I had suddenly
brought to the surface--I had talked about it to my mother years ago,
had I, but it had distressed her, and even to my father, but he had
snubbed me?--then I had been deliberately fostering aims and plans to
which I had always known that my parents would be opposed. My father
didn't believe a word of it. It was the old story. I must be peculiar
at any price. I must have something new to amuse me, and be unlike the
rest of the family. It was always the same. For years I had found more
satisfaction from the conversation of a man who had spent ten years of
his life in the hulks than from that of my own father. Then this Indian
Colonel had taken my fancy, and it had made him sick to see the
womanish--he could call it no better, the _weak-womanish_--way in which
I worshipped him. If I were a daughter instead of a son, my caprices
would distress and astonish him less. He could have sent me to my
mother, and my mother might have sent me to my needle. In a son, from
whom he looked for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was
painful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of
candour--(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of the
indictment)--these were my besetting sins, and would lead me into
serious trouble. This new fad, just, too, when he had made most
favourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry's office as
the first step in a prosperous career. I didn't know; didn't I? Perhaps
not. Perhaps I had been at the Woods' when he and my mother were
speaking of it. But now I did know. The matter was decided, and he hoped
I should profit by my opportunities. I might go, and I was to shut the
door after me.

I omit what my father said of the matter from a religious point of
view, though he accused m