never heard the least
allusion to it, however far off and remote, from either of them. I have
never, until I now impart it to this paper, in any burst of confidence
with any one, my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then
dropped, thank God.

"Until old Hungerford market was pulled down, until old Hungerford
Stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed, I
never had the courage to go back to the place where my servitude began.
I never saw it. I could not endure to go near it. For many years, when I
came near to Robert Warren's in the Strand, I crossed over to the
opposite side of the way, to avoid a certain smell of the cement they
put upon the blacking-corks, which reminded me of what I was once. It
was a very long time before I liked to go up Chandos Street. My old way
home by the borough made me cry, after my eldest child could speak.

"In my walks at night I have walked there often, since then, and by
degrees I have come to write this. It does not seem a tithe of what I
might have written, or of what I meant to write."

The substance of some after-talk explanatory of points in the narrative,
of which a note was made at the time, may be briefly added. He could
hardly have been more than twelve years old when he left the place, and
was still unusually small for his age; much smaller, though two years
older, than his own eldest son was at the time of these confidences. His
mother had been in the blacking-warehouse many times; his father not
more than once or twice. The rivalry of Robert Warren by Jonathan's
representatives, the cousins George and James, was carried to wonderful
extremes in the way of advertisement; and they were all very proud, he
told me, of the cat scratching the boot, which was _their_ house's
device. The poets in the house's regular employ he remembered, too, and
made his first study from one of them for the poet of Mrs. Jarley's
wax-work. The whole enterprise, however, had the usual end of such
things. The younger cousin tired of the concern; and a Mr. Wood, the
proprietor who took James's share and became George's partner, sold it
ultimately to Robert Warren. It continued to be his at the time Dickens
and myself last spoke of it together, and he had made an excellent
bargain of it.

CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL-DAYS AND START IN LIFE.

1824-1830.

Outcome of Boyish Trials--Disadvantage in Later
Years--Advantages--Next Move in
Life--Well