n.

"Of course, all for love," replied Mary, looking at me, "or Latin--
which, Jacob?"

"What's Latin?" said her father.

"Oh! that's a new sense Jacob has been showing me something of, which,
like many others, proved to be nonsense."

I went for the beer, and when I returned found the fire burning
brightly, and a strong _sense_ of smoking from old Stapleton's pipe. He
puffed once or twice more, and then commenced his history as follows:

"I can't exactly say when I were born, nor where," said old Stapleton,
taking his pipe out of his mouth, "because I never axed either father or
mother, and they never told me, because why, I never did ax, and that be
all agreeable to human natur'." Here Stapleton paused, and took three
whiffs of his pipe. "I recollects when I was a little brat about two
foot nothing, mother used to whack me all day long, and I used to cry in
proportion. Father used to cry shame, and then mother would fly at him;
he would whack she; she would up with her apron in one corner and cry,
while I did the same with my pinbefore in another; all that was nothing
but human natur'." [A pause, and six or seven whiffs of the pipe.]

"I was sent to school at a penny a week, to keep me out of the way, and
out of mischief. I larnt nothing but to sit still on the form and hold
my tongue, and so I used to amuse myself twiddling my thumbs, and
looking at the flies as they buzzed about the room in the summer time;
and in the winter, cause there was no flies of no sort, I used to watch
the old missus a-knitting of stockings, and think how soon the time
would come when I should go home and have my supper, which, in a child
was nothing but human natur'." [Puff, puff, puff.] "Father and mother
lived in a cellar; mother sold coals and 'tatoes, and father used to go
out to work in the barges on the river. As soon as I was old enough,
the schoolmissus sent word that I ought to learn to read and write, and
that she must be paid threepence a week; so father took me away from
school, because he thought I had had education enough; and mother
perched me on a basket upside down, and made me watch that nobody took
the goods while she was busy down below; and then I used to sit all day
long watching the coals and 'tatoes, and never hardly speaking to
nobody; so having nothing better to do, I used to think about this, and
that, and everything, and when dinner would be ready, and when I might
get off the basket; for you see _