America, she quarrelled with the man who was
first-lieutenant, and meeting him on shore, she put a pistol into his
hand, and told him he must fight her. He was a spirited fellow, and
said that he never refused that sort of invitation, and as it was in the
chief street of a large city, they had plenty of seconds. Well, they
fought, and she had the misfortune to shoot him through the heart. Most
men would have died immediately, but he lived long enough to forgive her
for what she'd done, and to say what a fine fellow he thought her. Of
course, as it's against the articles of war to shoot a first-lieutenant,
she couldn't go aboard the frigate again; and when a file of marines
came to seize her, the people of the place carried her off, and wouldn't
give her up, and so the jollies had to return without her. Two parties
were formed in the place. One said she ought to be given up, and the
other, that she oughtn't, and shouldn't, and that they wouldn't. It was
one of the secret causes of the American revolution.

"Among those who sided with her was a Captain Johnson, a very fine man,
master of a very fine ship, and as he happened to want a mate, he asked
my mother if she would take the berth, not dreaming all the time that
she was a woman. They had a good deal of talk about the matter, and as
she had taken a fancy to him, she told him all her history. I have said
that my father was a fine man. He was the tallest and smartest man I
ever saw, and had the loudest voice, too, I believe you, or he wouldn't
have won the heart of my mother. She wasn't a woman to knock under to
an ordinary, everyday sort of man. He was so tall, that the barber had
to stand on the table to shave him, and as he walked along the streets,
he could hand sugar-plums to the children in the upper windows; and his
voice was so loud, that he once made a stone-deaf woman jump off her
chair, right up to the ceiling, with fright, when he raised it above the
ordinary pitch to speak to her; and he was so strong, that he made
nothing of lifting an ale cask to his lips, and drinking out of the
bung-hole. He was the man to command a ship's company! When he found
any two of them quarrelling, he would lift one up in each hand, with
outstretched arms, and he would then knock their two heads together, and
go on bumping harder and harder till they promised to be friends.

"No two people could have been better matched than my parents, and they
had a sincere resp