rch, into
which the Christian religion had been beaten and enforced, both with
clenched fist and pointed elbow, and which now plainly told the
congregation that it had at last yielded only to Parson Brown's
impressive manner and arguments--in this prodigious volume, protected by
huge brass clasps, which naught but the rough hand of the man of
skulls[2] could force to obedience, after the oft-wetted thumb had
aroused some hundreds of gigantic leaves from their peaceful slumber,
and the book had opened wide its time-worn pages, there was, and, I
doubt not, is still to be discovered, a plainly-written record, setting
forth, in most intelligible terms, that I, John Shipp, the humble author
of these Memoirs, came into this wicked and untoward generation on the
16th day of March, A.D. 1785. If this register be an authentic
enrolment, which I have neither reason nor inclination to doubt, I was
the second son of Thomas and Laetitia Shipp--persons of honest fame, but
in indigent circumstances, who had both "drank deep" of the cup of
sorrow. Of the latter of those dear parents I was bereft in my infancy;
and, as my father was a soldier in a foreign clime, thus was I thrown on
the world's tempestuous ocean, to buffet with the waves of care, and to
encounter the breakers of want.

At the death of my poor mother I was left, with my elder brother, in
utter destitution. The advantage which other children derive from the
support and good counsel of an affectionate father, we had never known;
and we were now suddenly bereft of a fond mother's fostering care, and
with it, of our humble parental home. Where, under such circumstances,
could we look for protection? Friends we had few, if any; and those who
might have been generously disposed to assist us were, unfortunately,
incapacitated, by their own distressed circumstances, from extending a
helping hand towards us. Need I feel shame, then, in avowing that there
was one place of refuge, and one place only, in which two helpless
orphans could obtain, at once, food, clothes, and shelter; and that that
one asylum was the village poorhouse!

At the age of nine I was deprived of my brother, who was pressed on
board a man-of-war. He was a remarkably fine youth of about fourteen;
and, being of a wild spirited disposition, I have every reason to
believe that but little _pressing_ was required to induce him to go to
sea; but rather, that being, like myself, homeless and dependent, he
gladly ava