In the fourteenth chapter Borrow describes his father's retirement from the army after Waterloo, and his settling down at Norwich, so poor as to be anxious for his children's future. He speaks of poor officers who "had slight influence with the great who gave themselves very little trouble either about them or their families." Originally he went on thus, but cut out the words from the proof: "Yet I have reason for concluding that they were not altogether overlooked by a certain power still higher than even the aristocracy of England and with yet more extensive influence in the affairs of the world. I allude to Providence, which, it is said, never forsakes those who trust in it, as I suppose these old soldiers did, for I have known many instances in which their children have contrived to make their way gallantly in the world, unaided by the patronage of the great, whilst others who were possessed of it were most miserably shipwrecked, being suddenly overset by some unexpected squall, against which it could avail them nothing." This change is a relief to the style. The next which I shall quote is something more than that. It shows Borrow constructing the conversation of his father and mother when they were considering his prospects at the age of twelve. His father was complaining of the boy's Gypsy look, and of his ways and manners, and of the strange company he kept in Ireland--"people of evil report, of whom terrible things were said--horse- witches and the like." His mother made the excuse: "But he thinks of other things now." "Other languages, you mean," said his father. But in the proof his mother adds to her speech, "He is no longer in Ireland," and the father takes her up with, "So much the better for him; yet should he ever fall into evil practices, I shall always lay it to the account of that melancholy sojourn in Ireland and the acquaintances he formed there." Instead of putting into his friend, the Anglo-Germanist Williams Taylor's mouth, the opinion "that as we are aware that others frequently misinterpret us, we are equally liable to fall into the same error with respect to them," he alters it to the very different one, "That there is always some eye upon us; and that it is impossible to keep anything we do from the world, as it will assuredly be divulged by somebody as soon as it is his interest to do so." In the twenty-fourth chapter Borrow makes Thurtell, the friend of bruisers, hint, with unconscious tragic irony, at his famous end--by dying upon the gallows for the murder of Mr. William Weare. He tells the magistrate whom he has asked to lend him a piece of land for a prize-fight that his own name is no matter. "However," he continues, "a time may come--we are not yet buried--whensoever my hour arrives, I hope I shall prove myself equal to my destiny, however high-- "Like bird that's bred amongst the Helicons." In the original Thurtell's quotation was: "No poor unminded outlaw sneaking home."