Pressing entreaties and rough commands, half imperious instances and very seductive glances, all were directed towards me, with the object of extorting some traits of my life, and more particularly of that part of it which concerned my birth and parentage. If the example of the company invited the most unqualified candor, I cannot say that it overcame certain scruples I felt about revealing my humble origin. I was precisely in that anomalous position in life when such avowals are most painful. Without ambition, the confession had not cost me any sacrifice; while, on the other hand, I had not attained that eminence which has a proud boastfulness in saying, "Yes, I, such as you see me now,--great, titled, wealthy, and powerful,--I was the son of a newsvender or a lamplighter." Such avowals, highly lauded as they are by the world, especially when made by archbishops or chancellors, or other great folk, at public dinners, are, to my thinking, about as vainglorious bits of poor human nature as the most cynical could wish to witness. They are the mere victories of vanity over self-esteem. Now, I had no objection that the world should think me a young gentleman of the very easiest notions of right and wrong, with a conscience as elastic as gutta-percha, picking my way across life's stream on the stepping-stones made by other men's skulls,--being, as the phrase has it, a very loose fish indeed; but I insisted on their believing that I was well-born. Every one has his weakness,--this was Con Cregan's; and as these isolated fissures in strong character are nearly allied with strength, so was it with me: had I not had this frailty, I had never cherished so intensely the passion to become a gentleman. This is all digressionary; but I 'll not ask pardon of my dear reader for all that. If he be reading in his snug, well-cushioned chair, with every appliance of ease about him, he'll not throw down these "Confessions" for a bit of prosing that invites the sleep that is already hovering round him. If he has taken me up in the few minutes before dinner, he 'll not regret the bit of meditation which does not involve him in a story. If he be spelling me out in a mail-train, he'll be grateful for the "skipping" place, which leaves him time to look out and see the ingenious preparations that are making by the "down" or the "up" train to run into and smash the unhappy convoy of which he forms a part. "Come, my young lad, out with it. Let us hear a bit about the worthy people who took the sin of launching you into the wide ocean. You must have had owners one time or other." This was said by a hearty looking old man, with hair white as snow, and an enormous pair of eyebrows to match.