I promised him that I would abide by his instructions, and although up to a certain age I was not permitted to handle a razor, I was, nevertheless, always in my father's shop, and watched with admiring eyes the masterly way in which my progenitor finished off his customers. In the case of a tooth having to be drawn, or a vein opened, I was never missing, and great was my pride should my father call upon me now and then to render him some trifling assistance. I might have been about seven years old when I made my first essay. It was about Christmas time, and my father had just killed a pig, which he had left hung up by the legs in the yard. Being left alone for a few minutes, a bright idea struck me. I would try my "'prentice han'" on the carcase of the porker. So, locking all the doors so as not to be interrupted, I mixed up a lather and, with one of my father's well-sharpened razors, I commenced operations. Whilst thus busily employed, I was attracted by the sound of smothered laughter, and looking up at the window of our next-door neighbour's house, which looked into our yard, I beheld some dozen of the neighbours, who had been called in to witness my performance. I thought they would have died with laughter. However, nothing daunted, I proceeded diligently with my task, until my father, rattling at the door, demanded instant admittance. I was forced to admit him, and when he saw what I had been about, he quickly snatched the razor from my hand, and calling me "a dirty young dog," administered to me a slight kick behind, although I thought at the time, by the expression on his face, and likewise by that on my mother's, that my parents felt inwardly proud of their son. An interval of two years now elapsed before I again put hand to razor. I remember that at this time I was nine years old, and it was when I was at this tender age that my poor father caught a fever and died. As you may suppose, gentlemen, it was a terrible blow to my poor widowed mother, who, besides the grief she naturally felt for the loss of an affectionate husband, found herself now alone in the world with a growing lad to support as well as herself by the scanty proceeds of the business. It was some little time before I could realise the fact that my father was actually dead. When my mother first brought me the startling news I heard it in a sort of stupor, resembling insensibility, out of which I did not awake until the undertaker arrived with the coffin, when the whole extent of our calamity seemed to dawn upon me for the first time, and I fairly howled for grief. Whilst thus indulging my sorrow, a few neighbours dropped in to see my father laid out in his coffin before he was nailed down. I heard my mother make something like an apology for showing her husband's body before it had been shaved. I stopped short in my sobbing and mused awhile. It was then the custom to shave a corpse before consigning it to its last home. Who was to perform this duty?