can't say; but I always passed as her nevyou. We led a strange
life; sometimes ma was dressed in sattn and rooge, and sometimes in rags
and dutt; sometimes I got kisses, and sometimes kix; sometimes gin,
and sometimes shampang; law bless us! how she used to swear at me, and
cuddle me; there we were, quarrelling and making up, sober and tipsy,
starving and guttling by turns, just as ma got money or spent it.
But let me draw a vail over the seen, and speak of her no more--its
'sfishant for the public to know, that her name was Miss Montmorency,
and we lived in the New Cut.

My poor mother died one morning, Hev'n bless her! and I was left alone
in this wide wicked wuld, without so much money as would buy me a penny
roal for my brexfast. But there was some amongst our naybors (and let me
tell you there's more kindness among them poor disrepettable creaturs,
than in half a dozen lords or barrynets) who took pity upon poor Sal's
orfin (for they bust out laffin when I called her Miss Montmorency), and
gev me bred and shelter. I'm afraid, in spite of their kindness, that
my MORRILS wouldn't have improved if I'd stayed long among 'em. But a
benny-violent genlmn saw me, and put me to school. The academy which I
went to was called the Free School of Saint Bartholomew's the Less--the
young genlmn wore green baize coats, yellow leather whatsisnames, a tin
plate on the left arm, and a cap about the size of a muffing. I stayed
there sicks years; from sicks, that is to say, till my twelth year,
during three years of witch I distinguished myself not a little in the
musicle way, for I bloo the bellus of the church horgin, and very fine
tunes we played too.

Well, it's not worth recounting my jewvenile follies (what trix we
used to play the applewoman! and how we put snuff in the old clark's
Prayer-book--my eye!); but one day, a genlmn entered the school-room--it
was on the very day when I went to subtraxion--and asked the master for
a young lad for a servant. They pitched upon me glad enough; and nex
day found me sleeping in the sculry, close under the sink, at Mr. Bago's
country-house at Pentonwille.

Bago kep a shop in Smithfield market, and drov a taring good trade in
the hoil and Italian way. I've heard him say, that he cleared no less
than fifty pounds every year by letting his front room at hanging time.
His winders looked right opsit Newgit, and many and many dozen chaps has
he seen hanging there. Laws was laws in the year ten,