st
observe, makes a wide difference. From this class I am lineally
descended; and, at an early age, was duly initiated into all the
mysteries of my profession. I could filch a handkerchief as soon as I
was high enough to reach a pocket, and was declared to be a most
promising child.

"I must do my father and mother the justice to acknowledge, that while
they initiated me in the mysteries of my future profession, they did not
attempt to conceal that there were certain disagreeable penalties
attached to `greatness;' but, when prepared from our earliest years, we
look forward to our fate with resignation: and, as I was invariably
told, after my return from some daring feat, that my life would be a
short and a merry one, I was not dismayed at the words of my prophetic
mother, who observed, `Patrick, my boy, if you don't wish to bring my
grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, promise me to confine yourself to
picking pockets; you will then only be transported: but if you try your
hand at higher work, you'll be hung before you're twenty.' My father,
when I returned with a full assorted cargo, and emptied my pockets into
his hands, with as much rapidity as I had transferred the contents of
others into my own, used to look at me with a smile of pride and
satisfaction, and, shaking his head, would exclaim--`Pat, you'll
certainly be hung.'

"Accustomed, therefore, from my infancy, to consider twenty summers,
instead of threescore years and ten, as the allotted space of my
existence, I looked forward to my exit from this world, by the new drop,
with the same placidity as the nobleman awaits the time appointed for
the entrance of his body into the vault containing the dust of his
ancestors. At the age of eleven years, I considered myself a full-grown
man, dared all that man could do, and was a constant, but unwilling
attendant upon the police office, where my youth, and the promises of my
mother that I should be reformed, assisted by showers of tears on her
part, and by apparent ingenuousness on mine, frequently pleaded in my
favour with the prosecutors.

"I often lamented, when at that early age, that my want of education
prevented me from attempting the higher walks of our profession; but
this object of my ambition was gained at last. I had taken a
pocket-book from a worthy Quaker, and, unfortunately, was perceived by a
man at a shop window, who came out, collared, and delivered me into the
hands of the prim gentleman. Ha