To think upon the Bridge of Kew, To me a bridge of sighs; Oh, Kate, a pair of icicles Are standing in my eyes! God knows if I shall e’er return, In comfort to be lulled; But if I do get back to port, Pray let me have it mulled. [Illustration: KEW BRIDGE.] [Illustration: A STEP-FATHER.] A STEP-FATHER. “Follow, follow, follow, follow, Follow, follow, follow me.”--OLD SONG. I know not what friend, or fiend, or both together, put such a folly into the head of my maternal parent; but, like Hamlet’s mother, she set her widow’s cap at the sex, and re-married. A second marriage is seldom a favourable alteration of state; it is like changing a sovereign twice over; first into silver, and then into copper. My mother’s step was of this description! My first father was a plump, short, and rather Dutch-built little person; but the most merry, good-humoured, and kind-hearted, yet withal the slowest goer of the human race. His successor was saturnine in spirit, and stern in temper, a tall bony figure, remarkable for the length of his nether limbs; he was, to adopt a school-boy phrase, a Walker by name, and a walker by nature; and the exercise of this propensity taught me painfully to appreciate the difference between my dear first Daddy and my Daddy-Long-legs. My father Heavy-sides was what is called slow and sure: which means sure to be left behind. He had a solemn creak in his shoes, that declared how deliberately his toes turned on their hinges; his movement through life was a minuet de la cour. My Step-father Walker’s was a galopade. Considered as Foot Soldiers, or adverse parties of infantry, before one had well marched into his position, the other would have turned his right flank, cut off his left wing, charged his centre, harassed his rear, and surrounded his whole body. They were, alas! literally the quick and the dead, causing between them a race of my toes against my tears, and, if anything, my toes ran the fastest and farthest.