last night. The savage tent, and the green moor; the fagot blaze; the
eternal pot, with its hissing note of preparation; the old dame who
tended it, and the ragged urchins who learned from its contents the
first reward of theft and the earliest temptation to it,--all these
are blended into agreeable confusion as the primal impressions of my
childhood. The woman who nurtured me as my mother was rather capricious
than kind, and my infancy passed away, like that of more favoured scions
of fortune, in alternate chastisement and caresses. In good truth,
Kinching Meg had the shrillest voice and the heaviest hand of the whole
crew; and I cannot complain of injustice, since she treated me no worse
than the rest. Notwithstanding the irregularity of my education, I grew
up strong and healthy, and my reputed mother had taught me so much fear
for herself that she left me none for anything else; accordingly, I
became bold, reckless, and adventurous, and at the age of thirteen
was as thorough a reprobate as the tribe could desire. At that time
a singular change befell me: we (that is, my mother and myself) were
begging not many miles hence at the door of a rich man's house in which
the mistress lay on her death-bed. That mistress was my real mother,
from whom Meg had stolen me in the first year of existence. Whether it
was through the fear of conscience or the hope of reward, no sooner had
Meg learnt the dangerous state of my poor mother, the constant grief,
which they said had been the sole though slow cause of her disease, and
the large sums which had been repeatedly offered for my recovery; no
sooner, I say, did Meg ascertain all these particulars than she fought
her way up to the sick-chamber, fell on her knees before the bed, owned
her crime, and produced myself. Various little proofs of time, place,
circumstance; the clothing I had worn when stolen, and which was still
preserved, joined to the striking likeness I bore to both my parents,
especially to my father, silenced all doubt and incredulity: I was
welcomed home with a joy which it is in vain to describe. My return
seemed to recall my mother from the grave; she lingered on for many
months longer than her physicians thought it possible, and when she died
her last words commended me to my father's protection."

"My surviving parent needed no such request. He lavished upon me all
that superfluity of fondness and food of which those good people who are
resolved to spoil their