50 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



The point was that we should make him hear every word, 

 and many are the parsons who would do well to practise 

 elocution under similar conditions. 



The above allusion to " the Lancashire people " touches 

 the distress among the cotton operatives, in consequence 

 of the American War, and it may be added here that I 

 have to thank Mr Gray for what is now a useful habit 

 viz. that I want no sugar in tea or coffee. He told us 

 at the time under notice that it would be good for us to 

 deny ourselves something for the benefit of the Lancashire 

 people, and if we would do without sugar in tea or coffee, 

 he would give us each sixpence a week to send to the fund 

 which was being raised for these poor people. We agreed 

 to do so, and the result was that after taking tea without 

 sugar for a fortnight, nothing would have induced me to 

 take sugared tea again, but I never told Mr Gray this, 

 and continued to draw sixpence a week for the Lancashire 

 operatives as long as I remained with him. The merest 

 suspicion of sugar in tea is hateful to me to-day. 



It may as well be mentioned that the extracts from my 

 diary are not in any way corrected for publication, so that 

 I evidently could spell all right when eleven years old, 

 but here comes a letter to my sister written from Cundale 

 in 1862, and it should be explained that I had always 

 not only had a craving for the sea but had developed no 

 mean skill in making models of ships : my chef d'ceuvre 

 was a vessel 2 ft. 6 in. long, rigged as a brig, and called the 

 Nautilus. She was a two-decker, and carried twenty-four 

 brass guns, which could really be fired, and when these 

 were all loaded, with a pellet in each, and connected with 

 a long piece of touch-paper gummed across them, it used 

 to be pleasant to send the vessel sailing on a duck pond 

 to fire intermittently at the ducks. Now mark this 

 extract from the letter : 



CUNDALE, 1862. 



I am thinking of having the Nautilus iron-plated when I come 

 home, for it will not only hinder her from cracking (which she 

 seems inclined to do) but there are to be no more wooden men-of- 



