THE HULL 

 LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL MISCELLANY. 



No. IX. JUNE. Vol. II. 



THE LIFE OF PETER BUFF. 



Dear Reader ! — I am now about describing to you some of the 

 many misfortunes that have befallen me through life. I am afraid 

 you will smile ; sometimes I am inclined to be merry at them myself, 

 but that's not often. I started very early in life with misfortune. 

 I had a peculiar way of throwing myself or falling out of my nurse's 

 anns, and was occasionally found with my heels uppennost, and my 

 head in a bucket of water ; sometimes varying it by tumbling into a 

 dirty ditch behind the house. I was no doubt bom for misfortunes, 

 or I should have been finished in my early days. I should suppose 

 there never was a boy that had swallowed so much mud ; if it had 

 been solid, there must have been sufficient to have qualified me as a 

 voter for the county, on account of being a landed proprietor. 



After putting sundry ugly marks on my face by falling, and getting 

 several nurser}' maids discharged for letting me fall, with numerous 

 other accidents and occurrences of the like natme, I was by some 

 extraordmary and unheard of means preserved until I arrived at an 

 age when it was thought expedient to send me to a preparatory day 

 school, before leaving home as a boarder. This was very pleasant 

 news to me, as T had some vague and indistinct notion that school 

 was a sort of earthly paradise ; perhaps it may be to some boys, but 

 I did not always find it so. My father not being able to go with 



L 



