trundled my hoop with boyish glee—not a meadow into which I had not gone in search of buttercups and cowslips and primroses or bird’s nests. I only met one man I knew, the miller, as he came from the mill where he had been at work all night, and of him I stood somewhat in awe, for once when the mill was being robbed he had sat up alone in darkness in the mill till the robbers came in, when he looked, through a hole in the upper floor, as they were at their wicked work below, and had thus identified them; and I had seen them in a cart on their way to Beccles gaol. Perhaps, thought I, he will stop me and ask me what I am about; but he did nothing of the kind, and henceforth the way was clear for me to London, where I was to fight the battle of life. Did I not write poetry, and did not I know ladies who were paid a guinea a page for writing for the Annuals, and could not I do the same? And thus thinking I walked three miles till I came to a small beershop, where I had a biscuit and a glass of beer. The road from thence was new to me, and how I revelled in the stateliness of the trees as I passed a nobleman’s (Earl Stradbrooke’s) mansion and park. In another hour or so I found myself at Yoxford, then and still known as the Garden of Suffolk. There lived a Mr. Bird, a Suffolk poet of some note in his day. On him I called. He gave me a cordial welcome, kept me to dinner, and set me to play with his children. Alas! Yoxford was to me what Capua was to Hannibal—I got no further; in fact, my father traced me to the house, and I had nothing for it but to abandon my London expedition and return home. I don’t think I was very sorry that my heroic enterprise had thus miscarried. What annoyed me most was that I was sent home in an open cart, and as we got into the street all the women came to their doors to see Master James brought back. I did not like being thus paraded as a show. I found my way to the little attic in which I slept, not quite so much of a hero as I had felt myself in the early morn.