ICE OF MY
PROFESSION.

Those who may be pleased to honour these pages with a perusal, will not
be detained with a long introductory history of my birth, parentage, and
education. The very title implies that, at this period of my memoirs, I
was ignorant of the two first; and it will be necessary for the due
development of my narrative, that I allow them to remain in the same
state of bliss; for in the perusal of a tale, as well as in the
pilgrimage of life, ignorance of the future may truly be considered as
the greatest source of happiness.

The little that was known of me at this time I will however narrate as
concisely, and as correctly, as I am able. It was on the -- I really
forget the date, and must rise from my chair, look for a key, open a
closet, and then open an iron safe to hunt over a pile of papers--it
will detain you too long--it will be sufficient to say that it was on
_a_ night--but whether the night was dark or moonlit, or rainy or foggy,
or cloudy or fine, or starlight, I really cannot tell; but it is of no
very great consequence. Well, it was on a night about the hour--there
again I'm puzzled, it might have been ten, or eleven, or twelve, or
between any of these hours; nay, it might have been past midnight, and
far advancing to the morning, for what I know to the contrary. The
reader must excuse an infant of -- there again I am at a nonplus; but we
will assume of some days old--if, when wrapped up in flannel and in a
covered basket, and, moreover, fast asleep at the time, he does not
exactly observe the state of the weather, and the time by the church
clock. I never before was aware of the great importance of dates in
telling a story; but it is now too late to recover these facts, which
have been swept away into oblivion by the broad wing of Time. I must
therefore just tell the little I do know, trusting to the reader's good
nature, and to blanks. It is as follows:--that, at the hour -- of the
night--the state of the weather being also --:--I, an infant of a
certain age -- was suspended by somebody or somebodies -- at the knocker
of the Foundling Hospital. Having made me fast, the said somebody or
somebodies rang a peal upon the bell which made the old porter start up
in so great a hurry, that, with the back of his hand he hit his better
half a blow on the nose, occasioning a great suffusion of blood from
that organ, and a still greater pouring forth of invectives from the
organ immediately be