o kick up a dust at home.
The brute! may he have to sharpen saws with bad files for half an
eternity! He swore--how awfully the fellow swore!--that I should be
turned from his inhospitable roof immediately--and my gentle nurse,
adding her tears to my squalls, through that dismal, sleety morning,
which was then breaking mistily upon so much wretchedness, was compelled
to carry me back to my mother.

The most impassioned entreaties, and an additional five pounds, at
length prevailed on Mrs Brandon to nestle me again in her bosom, and
try to excite the sympathy of her husband. She returned to him, but the
fellow had now taken to himself two counsellors, a drunken mate who
served under him in the pit, and his own avarice. I am stating mere
facts: I may not be believed--I cannot help it--but three times was I
carried backwards and forwards, every transit producing to the sawyer
five extra pounds, when, at length, my little head found a
resting-place. All these events I have had over and over again from my
nurse, and they are most faithfully recorded.

Before noon on that memorable morning the chaise-and-four were again at
the door, and the veiled and shawl-enveloped lady was lifted in, and the
vehicle dashed rapidly through the streets of Reading, in a northerly
direction. I pretend not to relate facts of which I have never had an
assured knowledge; I cannot state to where that chaise and its desolate
occupant proceeded, nor can I give a moving description of feelings that
I did not witness. When I afterwards knew that that lady was my mother,
I never dared question her upon these points, but, from the strength,
the intensity of every good and affectionate feeling that marked her
character, I can only conceive, that, if that journey was made in the
stupor of weakness and exhaustion, or even in the wanderings of
delirium, it must have been, to her, a dispensation of infinite mercy.

She deserted her new-born infant--she flung forth her child from the
warmth of her own bosom to the cold, hireling kindness of the stranger.
I think I hear some puritanical, world-observing, starched piece of
female rigidity exclaim, "And therein she did a great wickedness." The
fact I admit, but the wickedness I deny utterly.

That there were misery and much suffering inflicted, I do not deny; but
of all guilt, even of all blame, I eagerly acquit one, whose principles
of action were as pure, and the whole tenor of whose life was as
upr