My babyhood was composed of a series of disappointments. My hair was to have been, in the words of the monthly nurse, "the most beautifulest horburn," but sprouted forth a splendid specimen of that vegetable dye called carroty. I was to have been "as straight as an arrow;" but a cup of tea having been spilled over me as I lay in the servant's lap before the kitchen fire, I became so dreadfully warped that I am now a sort of demi-parenthesis, or, as a malicious punster once called me, "a perfect bow." I had the measles very mildly, as it was affirmed, for the whole virulence of the disorder displayed itself in one enormous pustule on the tip of my nose. This luminary so excited my infant wonder, that my eyes (really fine for green) were continually riveted to the _spot_, and have never forgotten it, for one or other of them is invariably engaged in searching for the lost treasure. I was not in convulsions above a dozen times during teething; but no sooner had I completed my chaplet of pearls, than the striking-weight of a Dutch clock which overhung my cradle dropped into my mouth, and convinced me of the extreme simplicity of dental surgery. [Illustration: A Disappointed Man] My "going alone" was the source of an infinitude of anxieties to my excellent mamma, who was so magnificently proportioned that it was many months before I could make the circuit of her full-flounced printed calico wrapper without resting. Poor mamma! she lost her life from a singular mistake. The house in which we lived had taken fire, and two good-natured neighbours threw Mrs. Wise out of the window instead of a feather-bed. She alighted on the head of Captain S----, who was then considered the _softest_ man in the three kingdoms, and received little injury by the ejectment; but her feelings were so lacerated by the mistake, that she refused all food, and lived entirely by suction, till she died _from_ it. I will pass over my school-days, merely observing _en passant_ that "Each day some unlucky disaster Placed me in the vocative case with my master," a squabby, tyrannical, double-jointed pedagogue. He was nicknamed _Cane-and-Able_, and I can testify to the justness of the nomenclature. At college the same _mis_-fortune attended me. There was ever an under-current of disappointment, which rendered all my exertions nugatory. If I was by accident "full of the god," I could never knock down any one but a proctor. If I determined on keeping close in my rooms, the wind immediately changed to N.E. by N. at which point my chimneys smoked like a community of Ya-Mynheers. My maternal uncle, Theodosius Otter, Esq. had signified that my expectations from him must be regulated entirely by my academical distinctions, and I was "pluck'd for my little-go." This occurred three months before the old booby's death. My legacy consisted of a presentation to the Gooseborough free school.