be to God, I got quite well; and I went down
to Portsmouth as soon as my business was
settled; and from Portsmouth I went to
London, to pass the Board of Admiralty again,
and their Lordships were kind enough to
augment my pension to nineteen pounds, eight
shillings, per annum. And when I came down
to Portsmouth again, I joined the "Victory,"
to serve in the Portsmouth ordinary; for I
had a recommendation from my last captain
to the captain of the "Victory," and I was
taken on directly. And I stayed in ordinary till
August, 1841, when the "Warspite" frigate
was commissioned, and my old captain of
the "Castor" got the ship. He sent for me,
and I joined the "Warspite" as quartermaster.
I stayed on board the "Warspite"
about four months, when I had the misfortune
to be knocked down the main hatchway; and
I fell down into the hold, and was obliged to
be taken to Haslar Hospital. I stopped in
the hospital for six weeks, and then, thanks
be to God, I got quite well. I was sent on
board the flag-ship, which I joined the 3rd of
February, 1842; and when our ship came
back again to Spithead, my captain was kind
enough to return me back to the ordinary
again; for he said he was afraid that I was
too old to go to sea.

And I remained in the ordinary till the 15th
of August, 1844, and then I was discharged.
And the captain of the "Victory" was kind
enough to write up to the Board of Admiralty
to get my pension augmented, which he got
done for me; and the Admiralty granted me
a pension of twenty-one pounds per annum
for life; and, with what little I can earn, I live
as comfortable as circumstances will allow me
to be: and I hope that I am truly thankful to
the Lord for the many blessings and mercies
that I have received at his hands through life.
Oft-times, when I see a poor man or woman
going along without any shoes on them, or
scarcely any clothes to cover them, how thank-
ful I am to feel that I have got a bed to lie
on, and clothes to cover me, and a house to
shelter me from the weather. Have I deserved
to be thus favoured any more than them? No.
But it is God's mercy that provides for me;
and I hope that the Lord will grant me one
prayer, and that is, contentment with the
lot the Almighty has been pleased to give
me. And I find every day new blessings
and mercies to be thankful for; and
especially for health, which is one of the
greatest blessings we can enjoy; for here I am,
a man seventy-three years old, and knocked
about at sea better than fifty years, in which
time I experienced some hard trials; and
still, thanks be to God, I am able to go out
every day to Anglesea from Gosport; and some
days I walk above twenty miles, which is a
great deal for a man of my age. But I know
that the Lord fits the back to the burden. I
have received many kindnesses from the
ladies and gentlemen about Anglesea these last
two or three years; and may the Lord reward
them for the many kindnesses that I have
received from their hands, shall be the chiefest
prayer of your humble and obedient servant.

A FUQUEER'S CURSE.

AMONG the many strange objects which an
Englishman meets with in India, there are
few which tend so much to upset his equanimity
as a visit from a wandering fuqueer.

The advent of one of these gentry in an
English settlement is regarded with much
the same sort of feeling as a vagrant cockroach,
when he makes his appearance unannounced
in a modern drawing-room. If
we could imagine the aforesaid cockroach
brandishing his horns in the face of the
horrified inmates, exulting in the disgust
which his presence creates, and intimating,
with a conceited swagger, that, in virtue of
his ugliness, he considered himself entitled to
some cake and wine, perhaps the analogy
would be more complete.

The fuqueer is the mendicant friar of India.
He owns no superior; wears no clothing;
performs no work; despises everybody and
everything; sometimes pretends to perpetual
fasting; and lives on the fat of the land.

There is this much, however, to be said for
him, that when he does mortify himself for the
good of the community, he does it to some
purpose. A lenten fast, or a penance of
parched peas in his shoes, would be a mere
bagatelle to him. We have seen a fuqueer
who was never "known" to eat at all. He
carried a small black stone about with him,
which had been presented to his mother by
a holy man. He pretended that by sucking
this stone, and without the aid of any sort of
nutriment, he had arrived at the mature age
of forty; yet he had a nest of supplementary
chins, and a protuberant paunch, which
certainly did great credit to the fattening
powers of the black stone. Oddly enough, his
business was to collect eatables and drinkables;
but, like the Scottish gentleman who
was continually begging brimstone, they were
"no for hissel, but for a neebour." When I
saw him he was soliciting offerings of rice,
milk, fish, and ghee, for the benefit of his
patron Devi. These offerings were nightly
laid upon the altar before the Devi, who
was supposed to absorb them during the
night, considerately leaving the fragments to
be distributed among the poor of the parish.
His godship was very discriminating in the
goodness and freshness of these offerings; for
he rejected such as were stale, to be returned
next morning, with his maledictions, to the
fraudulent donors.

Sometimes a fuqueer will take it into his
head that the community will be benefited by
his trundling himself along, like a cart-wheel,
for a couple of hundred miles or so. He ties
his wrists to his ankles, gets a tire, composed
of chopped straw, mud, and cow-dung, laid
along the ridge of his backbone; a bamboo