emarks, he took my sailor's suit and pitched it into the North
Beck--which ran near by our homestead. I regret I have no proof before me
that the clothes ever reached Hull. But we will let byegones be byegones.
I was put back to warp-dressing at North Beck Mills, where I remained for
a few months.

LOOKING FOR A TRADE

Then my father determined that I should have a trade of some sort. I
began to have a little taste for sculpture in a primitive kind of way,
and I used to smuggle big stones into my bed-chamber, and, when
opportunity offered, try to carve figures, busts, &c., out of them, with
tools which, I must confess, were far from having a razor's edge on them.
My father came to know of my efforts in this line, and he and my mother
held a confab, the result of which was that I was apprenticed to an uncle
of mine, a mason named Joshua Hill, of Harden. I remained at this
business for a fair time and helped my uncle to build Ryecroft Primitive
Methodist Chapel. He gave me every opportunity to become efficient in my
new calling if practice goes for anything. When I pass the chapel at
Ryecroft I look with some amount of pride on the two stoops, enclosing
the door, which I hewed out. After finishing the chapel my uncle Joshua
commenced the erection of a tavern, called the "Moorcock," at Harden. But
in my new situation my pocket-money was very limited. I didn't appreciate
this limitation, and I left the service of my uncle and went to Bingley.

ADVENTURING WITH THE SHOWS

It happened to be the Tide, and going into the Gas Field I fell in with
the proprietor of a travelling theatre, a Frenchman, rejoicing in the
name of "Billy Shanteney." He asked me to join his company, which I
eventually did. At night, before the performance commenced, I paraded on
the platform outside as a gay spangled warrior, and while thus engaged I
was somewhat astonished to behold my uncle Joshua making his way to what
seemed the entrance, but he darted on to me and attempted to drag me, as
he himself said, "back home." However, I didn't go back home, and we went
on with the performance. At the close of the Tide week, the company went
to Idle, and I went with them; and thence to the Bradford Fairground. It
goes without saying that when Bill o'th' Hoylus End was playing as a king
one night and next morning getting a red herring to his breakfast, there
was something radically wrong somewhere. Still I had a hearty reverence
for the "silver