Batavia, and in
consequence did not lose a man. He watched over my moral and physical
health with a degree of zeal and tenderness that I have never, for an
instant, experienced since, at the hands of those who call themselves my
"friends." Indeed, the severest scolding he ever gave me, and I
expected every moment he would knock me down in the street, was for
walking, one deliciously cool morning, from Weltwreden to Batavia, a
distance of four miles, when I had a carriage and two horses at my
disposal.

Peace to his ashes! I have lived to see the grave close in succession
over many of the few friends that I ever had. When I wandered about
London streets, barefoot and half-naked, in the dead of a hard winter,
just discharged from a hospital, and scarcely able to drag one foot
after the other, my situation was comparatively enviable. I had no
self-styled "friends" at my elbow, to mock me by talking about my
"talents!" I knew that if I did not "bear a hand," and ship myself off
_somewhere_, I should be taken up on the vagrant act, and sent to
Bridewell. Burns says,

"The fear o' death's a hangman's whip,
That hauds the wretch in order."

I should be loth to admit that the fear of Bridewell operated as a
stimulus upon my mind, for it did not often occur to me; but I longed to
enjoy once more

"the glorious privilege
Of being independent;"

and he, who is earning an honest livelihood by his own exertions, and
can shave with cold water, is, in my estimation, more truly independent
than he, whose father has bequeathed him half a million. Reader! you may
as well pardon this digression first as last, for it is ten chances to
one that you fall in with a whole fleet of them before you have sailed
through these pages. If I do not moralize as I go along, I shall not
have a chance to do it any where else.

As the afflicted father returned, with melancholy steps and slow,
towards his quiet home, he could not forbear feeling an emotion of
regret at the thought of having parted with his son in such a manner.
"Had I but placed him," he said to himself, "under the charge of the
commander of one of our men-of-war, he would necessarily have been under
such strict guardianship and discipline that his unfortunate habits
might be entirely broken up; but now I fear that the liberty he will be
allowed, or will take, in a merchant's ship, will be his ruin."

His home was more gloomy and sad that evening than it ha