longing for a sailor's life also increased;
and whenever my schoolfellows and myself were conversing about the
occupations we should select as the means of gaining a livelihood
hereafter, I invariably said, "I will be a sailor."

Had my parents lived, it is possible that this deep-seated inclination
might have been thwarted; that my destiny might have taken another
shape. But my father died while I was quite young, and my mother
survived him but a few years. She lived long enough, however, to
convince me that there is nothing more pure, disinterested, and enduring
than a mother's love, and that those who are deprived of this blessing
meet at the outset of their pilgrimage a misfortune which can never
be remedied. Thus, before I had numbered fifteen years, I found myself
thrown a waif on the waters of life, free to follow the bent of my
inclination to become a sailor.

Fortune favored my wishes. Soon after the death of my parents, a
relation of my mother was fitting out a vessel in Portsmouth, N.H.,
for a voyage to Demarara; and those who felt an interest in my welfare,
conceiving this a good opportunity for me to commence my salt-water
career, acceded to my wishes, and prevailed on my relative, against his
inclination, to take me with him as a cabin boy.

With emotions of delight I turned my back on the home of my childhood,
and gayly started off to seek my fortune in the world, with no other
foundation to build upon than a slender frame, an imperfect education,
a vivid imagination, ever picturing charming castles in the air, and a
goodly share of quiet energy and perseverance, modified by an excess of
diffidence, which to this day I have never been able to overcome.

I had already found in a taste for reading a valuable and never-failing
source of information and amusement. This attachment to books has
attended me through life, and been a comfort and solace in difficulties,
perplexities, and perils. My parents, also, early ingrafted on my mind
strict moral principles; taught me to distinguish between right and
wrong; to cherish a love of truth, and even a chivalric sense of honor
and honesty. To this, perhaps, more than to any other circumstance, may
be attributed whatever success and respectability has attended my career
through life. It has enabled me to resist temptations to evil with which
I was often surrounded, and to grapple with and triumph over obstacles
that might otherwise have overwhelmed me.

When I