It was a cruel blow that deprived us of our kind protector! Mr. Ward died suddenly, and without a will; and my mother and I were left entirely unprovided with means. The old gentleman had often declared his intention of leaving my mother enough to render her comfortable during the remainder of her days, and had expressed his determination of setting me on in the world immediately I became of a proper age. It could hardly be expected that the heir-at-law would have fulfilled these intentions, even had he been cognisant of them. He was a low attorney, living somewhere in the neighbourhood of Drury-lane; and when he attended the funeral, and during the hour or two he remained in the house after it, it was quite clear that he had no wish to retain anything that belonged to his late relative except his property, and his valuable and available effects. He however paid my mother a month's wages in advance, presented me a dollar to commence the world with, shook hands with us, and wished us well. It was not long before my mother obtained a situation as servant in a small respectable family in King-street, Holborn; and, as I was now nearly eleven years of age, it was deemed by her friends high time that I should begin to get my own living. Such small influence, therefore, as my mother could command, was set on foot in my behalf; and I at length got a place as errand-boy to a picture-dealer in Wardour-street, Oxford-street. The duties required of me in this situation, if not of a valuable description, were, at least, various. I went with messages, I attended sales, I kept the shop, I cleaned the knives and shoes, and, indeed, performed all those services which it is the province of boys to render, some of which are often created because there happens to be boys to do them. This routine was, for a time, irksome. When I recalled the happy days I had spent under the roof of Mr. Ward, and the hopes and expectations he had excited within me of a more prosperous commencement of life,--hopes which his death had so suddenly destroyed,--it is not surprising that I should have felt a degree of discontent of my condition, for which I had no other cause. As I sat by the kitchen fire of an evening when my day's work was done, I often pictured to myself the old man lying where we had left him in the churchyard, mouldering insensibly away, unconscious of rain, or wind, or sunshine, or the coming of night, or the approach of day, wrapped in a shroud which would outlast its wearer, and silently waiting for oblivion. These thoughts became less frequent as time wore on; but I have never been able to dissociate the idea of death from these hideous conditions of mortality.