.

Just at this time the French Revolution commenced, and there was
expectation of a war with France; the press-gangs were ordered out, and
the seamen, aware of it, remained concealed until they should leave the
town. But my mother had made up her mind. She found out an officer who
commanded one of the press-gangs, gave her address, and, having supplied
my father with spirits until he was stupefied, she let in the gang, and
before morning my father was safe on board of the tender lying off the
Tower. This treachery on her part my father did not discover until some
time afterward; and it was the occasion of a scene between them, as I
shall hereafter show. The next day my mother went on board of the tender
to visit my father, put her cambric handkerchief to her eyes, pressed
his hand between the iron bars, and lamented _his_ hard fate, and _her_
hard fate; but when requested by him to smuggle a little liquor in a
bladder to comfort him with, she tossed up her head, and declared "that
nothing could induce her to do anything so ungenteel." Whereupon my
father turned away, lamenting the day that ever he had married a lady's
ladies' maid.

A day or two afterward my mother brought my father his kit of clothes,
and two pounds of his own money. As a war was expected, my mother would
have persuaded my father to give her his "will and power" to receive his
prize money; but my father, grown comparatively wiser, positively
refused. He turned away on his heel, and they parted.

I shall, for the present, leave my father to his fortunes, and follow
those of my mother. Convinced by his refusal to sign the deed, which she
had brought ready prepared with her, that she had little in future to
expect from my father, and aware probably of the risk incurred by a
seaman from "battle, fire, and wreck," she determined this time to
husband her resources, and try if she could not do something for
herself. At first she thought of going again into service and putting me
out to nurse; but she discovered that my father's return was not without
its consequences, and that she was again to be a mother. She therefore
hired rooms in Fisher's Alley, a small street still existing in
Greenwich, and indeed still a general thoroughfare. Here, in due time,
she was brought to bed of a daughter, whom she christened by the name of
Virginia; not so much out of respect to her last mistress, who bore that
name, as because she considered it peculiarly ladylike and ge