I had no need to ask Billy to give up his mind, and allow himself to think of just nothing at all, for it appeared a chronic state with him, to which he relapsed after every laugh. When he did enter the trance state he related the following very curious adventure of his early days. A STRANGE RESURRECTION. I am not what you may term an _old_ man, being a few months short of sixty-five years, but though my years are totalling up considerably, my spirits are light as a feather, and although fifty years have passed away since the story I am about to tell you took place, the incidents are as vivid in my memory as they were a month after their occurrence. I was a youngster of fourteen or fifteen at the time I am about to speak, and like most boys of that age had a liking for the sea, especially as I dwelt in a great seaport where every one was in some way or other connected with fish or ships, and where even the schoolboys’ common expressions were flavoured with nautical terms. My birthplace was Great Yarmouth, and at the time I left school in 1835, no one seemed to ask the question, which we so frequently hear now, of “What are you going to do with your son?” because it seemed predestined that the entrance of a boy into the world should be by way of the high seas. Each boy at the age of fourteen or fifteen appeared to look forward intuitively to the time when he should make his first voyage, or join one of the great herring fleets which annually leave Yarmouth in August; and he knew also that his maiden experience was merely a test, to ascertain for what particular division of toilsome nautical life he was most fitted. Some liked the sea and its thrilling dangers, and stuck to it through fair weather and foul, working their way upward, till in a very few years they became mate, skipper, and presently part owner of the smack or lugger they commanded. Others preferred shore life; the sea was too coy a mistress for them to woo; and they were accordingly apprenticed to sail or mast-makers, shipwrights, smiths, netmakers, or something of the kind connected with shipping. Others again would volunteer for service in Her Majesty’s Navy, being taken with the trim appearance of the young fellows who had preceded them in that branch of the nautical life, and came home on leave, to show off their little horde of gold saved from their first cruise money. Yet another set there were who, disdaining the toil of a fisher’s life, the subordination of the navy, or of being always ashore at some trade, chose the freer life which was led by those who were apprenticed to the coasting or mercantile trade. On leaving school I determined to see about me a little, and accordingly cast in my lot with the latter group, and was in due course enrolled as an apprentice on the books of _The Ladybird_, a smart little trading brig, belonging to Yarmouth.