“Hamlet.” We ardently desired to go, but had not sufficient money; and away we trudge to Brattle street, and exchange our new clothes for worthless rags, with five dollars besides. We then return to the theatre, and linger on its steps until the performance begins, when we purchase tickets, and rush, with about forty negroes, up stairs into the gallery, like a gang of maniacs, (so wild was our common joy,) where we witness a vast plain of woolly heads that resemble the Black Sea. The heat was intense, and we perspired like cotton slaves, and the stench was as intolerable as cholera malaria. During the day, we engaged lodgings with a little colored barber, opposite the theatre, for nine-pence each a night. At the close of the performance we thumped a long period before he let us in, and then we found him partially intoxicated. In the morning, we strolled on the Common, and John became homesick, and besought me to return to Providence; and he cried and implored so hard, that I yielded; and while engaging our passage, a young man named James Baker recognised us, and desired me to remain in Boston under his protection, to which I assented, but John departed for Providence. I went to board with Jim Baker in Theatre Alley, with Mrs. Charnock, a superannuated actress, and afterwards at the Sun Tavern and other places, for which we did not pay our board, and walked to Salem, where I wrote to father for money, which he sent me, and I returned to Providence. He received me with intense affection, and I wept with commingled joy and sorrow at my return, and his anguish at my dishonorable absence. At about ten years old, John Horsewell and myself stole some pigeons from Dexter Spencer’s barn, and we were caught with them in our hats. Father took my hand, and led me to the wharf, where ships could float, and suspended me over the water, until I had a slight fit, when he carried me home. It was baking day, and aunt Lucy was very angry because he did not drown me, and in her wrath, while he was absent, she took out the pies and brown bread, and put me in the oven head foremost, and nearly baked me. A few seconds more in the oven, and I would have smothered. I told father when he came to dinner, and he boxed Aunt Lucy’s ears severely, and demanded her to instantly surrender the dress and bonnet he gave her the day previous. But she cried so hard, and wrung her hands so piteously, that he soon restored them, lest she would have cramps in the stomach, with which she was often dangerously afflicted, through her excessive fondness for cheese and hard-shell clams, of which she often ate until she could scarcely breathe. A month later, I stole some peaches and currents from Captain Prouds’ garden, and old junk and iron from the ship yards. Father was a Justice of the Peace, and took me to jail, and put me in a cell; but I screamed so fearfully, that he restored me to liberty in about five minutes; and when I emerged from the dungeon, I sprang upon his