S--STAPLETON, BY
KEEPING HIS UNDER CONTROL, KEEPS HIS HEAD ABOVE WATER IN HIS WHERRY--
FORCED TO FIGHT FOR HIS WIFE, AND WHEN HE HAD WON HER, TO FIGHT ON TO
KEEP HER--NO GREAT PRIZE, YET IT MADE HIM A PRIZE-FIGHTER.

Old Stapleton finished his pipe, took another swig at the porter,
filled, relighted, puffed to try it, cleared his mouth, and then
proceeded:--

"Now, you see, Bartley, her husband, was the greatest rogue on the
river; he was up to everything, and stood at nothing. He fleeced as
much on the water as she did on the land; for I often seed her give
wrong change afterwards when people were tipsy, but I made it a rule
always to walk away. As for Bartley, his was always night-work, and
many's the coil of rope I have brought on shore, what, although he might
have paid for, he didn't buy it of the lawful owner, but I never _seed_
or _heard_, that was my maxim; and I fared well till I served my time,
and then they gave me their old wherry, and built a new one for
themselves. So I set up on my own account, and then I seed, and heard,
and had all my senses, just as they were before--more's the pity, for no
good came of it." [Puff, puff, puff, puff.] "The Bartleys wanted me to
join them, but that wouldn't do; for though I never meddled with other
people's concerns, yet I didn't choose to go wrong myself. I've seed
all the world cheating each other for fifty years or more, but that's no
concern of mine; I can't make the world better; so all I thinks about it
is to keep honest myself: and if every one was to look after his own
soul, and not trouble themselves about their neighbours, why, then, it
would be all the better for human natur'. I plied at the Swan Stairs,
gained my livelihood, and spent it as I got it; for I was then too young
to look out a'ter a rainy day.

"One night a young woman in a cloak comes down to the stairs with a
bundle in her arms, and seems in a very great taking, and asks me for a
boat. I hauls out of the row alongside of the yard, and hands her in.
She trips as she steps in, and I catches to save her from falling, and
in catching her I puts my hand upon the bundle in her arms, and feels
the warm face of a baby. `Where am I to go, ma'am?' says I. `O! pull
across, and land me on the other side,' says she; and then I hears her
sobbing to herself, as if her heart would break. When we were in the
middle o' the stream, she lifts up her head, and then first she looks at
the bundle and kiss