stence, and the pain arising from the knowledge that
there was now no one near me to care whether I was comfortable or not.
Again, these speculations merged into a sort of dreamy wonder, as to
why a queer little old gentleman opposite (my sole fellow-traveller) was
grunting like a pig, at intervals of about a minute, though he was wide
awake the whole time; and whether a small tuft of hair, on a mole at
the tip of his nose, could have anything to do with it. At this point my
meditations were interrupted by the old gentleman himself, who, after
a louder grunt than usual, gave vent to his feelings in the following
speech, which was partly addressed to me and partly a soliloquy.

"Umph! going to school, my boy, eh?" then, in a lower tone, "Wonder why
I called him my boy, when he's no such thing: just like me, umph!"

I replied by informing him that I was not exactly going to school--(I
was nearly fifteen, and the word "school" sounded derogatory to my
dignity)--but that, having been up to the present time educated at home
by my father, I was now on my way to complete my studies under the care
of a private tutor, who only received six pupils, a very different thing
from a school, as I took the liberty of insinuating.

"Umph! different thing? You will cost more, learn less, and fancy
yourself a man when you are a boy; that's the only difference I can
see:" then came the aside--"Snubbing the poor child, when he's a peg too
low already, just like me; umph!"

After which he relapsed into a silence which continued uninterrupted
until we reached London, save once, while we were changing horses, when
he produced a flask with a silver top, and, taking a sip himself, asked
me if I drank brandy. On my shaking my head, with a smile caused by
what appeared to me the utter wildness and desperation of the notion, he
muttered:--

"Umph! of course he doesn't; how should he?--just like me".

In due course of time we reached the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, where the
coach stopped, and where my trunk and myself were to be handed over to
the tender mercies of the coachman of the Rocket, a fast coach (I speak
of the slow old days when railroads were unknown) which then ran to
Helmstone, the watering-place where my future tutor, the Rev. Dr.
Mildman, resided. My first impressions of London are scarcely worth
recording, for the simple reason that they consisted solely of intense
and unmitigated surprise at everything and everybody I saw and
hear