hose childish reminiscences broke off--never to be resumed.
But from recollections of my father's talk--and he loved to talk of the
past--I will attempt to write what he himself might have written; no set
biography, but just the old household tales.

After the visit to London the family lived a while at Wickham Market,
where my father saw the long strings of tumbrils, laden with Waterloo
wounded, on their way from Yarmouth to London. Then in 1818 they settled
at Earl Soham, my grandfather having become rector of that parish and
Monk Soham. His father, Robinson Groome, the sea-captain, had purchased
the advowson of Earl Soham from the Rev. Francis Capper (1735-1818),
whose long tenure {12} of his two conjoint livings was celebrated by the
local epigrammatist:--

"Capper, they say, has bought a horse--
The pleasure of it bating--
That man may surely keep a horse
Who keeps a Groome in waiting."

It was in the summer-house at Earl Soham that my father, a very small
boy, read 'Gil Blas' to the cook, Lois Dowsing, and the sweetheart she
never married, a strapping sergeant of the Guards, who had fought at
Waterloo. And it was climbing through the window of this summer-house
that he tore a big rent in his breeches (he had just been promoted to
them), so was packed off to bed. That afternoon my grandfather and
grandmother were sitting in the summer-house, and she told him of the
mishap and its punishment. "Stupid child!" said my grandfather; "why, I
could get through there myself." He tried, and he too tore his small-
clothes, but he was not sent to bed.

With his elder brother, John Hindes (afterwards Rector of Earl Soham), my
father went to school at Norwich under Valpy. The first time my
grandfather drove them, a forty-mile drive; and when they came in sight
of the cathedral spire, he pulled up, and they all three fell a-weeping.
For my grandfather was a tender-hearted man, moved to tears by the
Waverley novels. Of Valpy my father would tell how once he had flogged a
day-boy, whose father came the next day to complain of his severity.
"Sir," said Valpy, "I flogged your son because he richly deserved it. If
he again deserves it, I shall again flog him. And"--rising--"if you come
here, sir, interfering with my duty, sir, I shall flog you." The parent
fled.

The following story I owe to an old schoolfellow of my father's, the Rev.
William Drake. "Among the lower boys," he writes, "were a broth