My Life as an Author

cribe at least can most gratefully countersign, that "it takes a g

ly seventy years ago I knew a small schoolboy of seven who accidentally slit his own throat while cutting a slate-frame against his chest with a sharp knife; there was a knot in the wood, the knife slipped up, a pinafore was instantaneously covered with blood-(though the little semisuicide was unconscious of any pain)-thereafter his neck was quickly strapped with diaculum plaister,-and to this day a slight scar may be found on the left side of a silvery beard! Was not this a providential escape? Again-a lively little urchin in his holiday recklessness ran his head pell-mell blindly against a certain cannon post in Swallow Passage, leading from Princes Street, Hanover Squar

, one of whom needlessly crossed over so that they commanded both sides, and soon seemed to be approximating; which when ?sop fortunately noticed, with a quick spur into Brenda he flashed by the

is ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight for three miles, holding

k again by another lurch right over the yawning waves-like an acrobat? Had I let go, no one would have known of that mystery of the sea,-where and when a certain celebrity then expected in America, had disappeared! Captain Judkin after that always had his bulwarks netted; so that was a

he bows of that d-- d Yankee:"-the huge black prow positively hung over us,-and it was a miracle that we were not sunk bodily in the mighty waters. What more? Well, I will here

eril in the L

gorge, grotesqu

orn, as ocean

er breaks and

sped me to t

deep, o'erhan

f Amphitrité,

mournful music

auteous forms o

nger, wanderi

aflowers, ta

wet walls.-A

ide!-I turned a

tly through that

especially) mention many more. Then there are all manner of the ordinary maladies of humanity, which