My health now became so precarious, that a letter arrived, signed simply E.R., ordering that I should be immediately baptised, and five pounds were enclosed for the expenses. The letter stated that two decent persons should be found by Mrs Brandon to be my sponsors, and that a female would appear on such a day, at such an hour, at Lambeth Church, to act as my godmother. That I was to be christened Ralph Rattlin, and, if I survived, I was to pass for their own child till further orders, and Ralph Rattlin Brandon were to be my usual appellations. Two decent persons being required, Joe Brandon, not having done any work for a couple of months, thought, by virtue of idleness, he might surely call himself one, to say nothing of his top-boots. The other godfather was a decayed fishmonger, of the name of Ford, a pensioner in the Fishmonger's Company, in whose alms-houses, at Newington, he afterwards died. A sad reprobate was old Ford--he was wicked from nature, drunken from habit, and full of repentance from methodism. Thus his time was very equally divided between sin, drink, and contrition. His sleep was all sin, for he would keep the house awake all night blaspheming in his unhealthy slumbers. As I was taken to church in a hackney-coach, my very honoured godfather, Ford, remarked, that "it would be a very pleasant thing to get me into hell before him, as he was sure that I was born to sin, a child of wrath, and an inheritor of the kingdom of the devil." This bitter remark roused the passions even of my gentle nurse, and she actually scored down both sides of his face with her nails, in such a manner as to leave deep scars in his ugliness, that nine years after he carried to his grave. All this happened in the coach on our way to church. Ford had already prepared himself for the performance of his sponsorial duties, by getting half drunk upon his favourite beverage, gin, and it was now necessary to make him wholly intoxicated to induce him to go through the ceremony. As yet, my nurse had never properly seen my mother's face; at the interview, on my birth, the agitation of both parties, and the darkened room, though there was no attempt at concealment, prevented Mrs Brandon from noticing her sufficiently to know her again; when, therefore, as our party alighted at the gate of the churchyard, and a lady, deeply veiled, got out of a carriage at some distance, Mrs Brandon knew not if she had ever seen her before.