offence. One boy, who had a stump of blacklead
pencil in his pocket, wrote his mother's
name and address (as he said) on my white
hat, outside the crown. MRS. BLORES, WOODEN
LEG WALK, TOBACCO-STOPPER ROW, WAPPING.
And I couldn't rub it out.

I recollect resting in a little churchyard
after this persecution, disposed to think upon
the whole, that if I and the object of my
affections could be buried there together, at
once, it would be comfortable. But, another
nap, and a pump, and a bun, and above all
a picture that I saw, brought me round again.

I must have strayed by that time, as I recal
my course, into Goodman's Fields, or somewhere
thereabouts. The picture represented
a scene in a play then performing at a theatre
in that neighbourhood which is no longer in
existence. It stimulated me to go to that
theatre and see that play. I resolved, as there
seemed to be nothing doing in the Whittington
way, that on the conclusion of the entertainments
I would ask my way to the barracks,
knock at the gate, and tell them that I
understood they were in want of drummers,
and there I was. I think I must have been
told, but I know I believed, that a soldier
was always on duty, day and night, behind
every barrack-gate, with a shilling; and that
a boy who could by any means be prevailed
on to accept it, instantly became a drummer,
unless his father paid four hundred pounds.

I found out the theatre—of its external
appearance I only remember the loyal initials
G. R. untidily painted in yellow ochre on the
front—and waited, with a pretty large crowd,
for the opening of the gallery doors. The
greater part of the sailors and others composing
the crowd, were of the lowest description,
and their conversation was not improving;
but I understood little or nothing of what
was bad in it then, and it had no depraving
influence on me. I have wondered since, how
long it would take, by means of such association,
to corrupt a child nurtured as I had been,
and innocent as I was.

Whenever I saw that my appearance
attracted attention, either outside the doors
or afterwards within the theatre, I pretended
to look out for somebody who was taking care
of me, and from whom I was separated, and
to exchange nods and smiles with that
creature of my imagination. This answered
very well. I had my sixpence clutched in my
hand ready to pay; and when the doors
opened, with a clattering of bolts, and some
screaming from women in the crowd, I went
on with the current like a straw. My
sixpence was rapidly swallowed up in the
money-taker's pigeon-hole, which looked to
me like a sort of mouth, and I got into the
freer staircase above, and ran on (as everybody
else did) to get a good place. When I
came to the back of the gallery, there were
very few people in it, and the seats looked so
horribly steep, and so like a diving arrangement
to send me, headforemost, into the pit,
that I held by one of them in a terrible fright.
However, there was a good-natured baker
with a young woman, who gave me his hand,
and we all three scrambled over the seats together
down into the corner of the first row.
The baker was very fond of the young woman,
and kissed her a good deal in the course of
the evening.

I was no sooner comfortably settled, than
a weight fell upon my mind, which tormented
it most dreadfully, and which I must explain.
It was a benefit night—the benefit of the
comic actor—a little fat man with a very
large face and, as I thought then, the smallest
and most diverting hat that ever was seen.
This comedian, for the gratification of his
friends and patrons, had undertaken to sing
a comic song on a donkey's back, and afterwards
to give away the donkey so distinguished,
by lottery. In this lottery, every
person admitted to the pit and gallery had a
chance. On paying my sixpence, I had received
the number, forty-seven; and I now
thought, in a perspiration of terror, what
should I ever do if that number was to come
up the prize, and I was to win the donkey!

It made me tremble all over to think
of the possibility of my good fortune. I
knew I never could conceal the fact of my
holding forty-seven, in case that number came
up because, not to speak of my confusion,
which would immediately condemn me, I had
shewn my number to the baker. Then, I
pictured to myself the being called upon to
come down on the stage and receive the
donkey. I thought how all the people would
shriek when they saw it had fallen to a little
fellow like me. How should I lead him out—for
of course he wouldn't go? If he began
to bray, what should I do? If he kicked,
what would become of me? Suppose he
backed into the stage-door, and stuck there,
with me upon him? For I felt that if I won
him, the comic actor would have me on his
back, the moment he could touch me. Then
if I got him out of the theatre, what was I to
do with him? How was I to feed him?
Where was I to stable him? It was bad
enough to have gone astray by myself, but
to go astray with a donkey, too, was a calamity
more tremendous than I could bear to
contemplate.

These apprehensions took away all my pleasure
in the first piece. When the ship came
on—a real man-of-war she was called in the
bills—and rolled prodigiously in a very
heavy sea, I couldn't, even in the terrors of
the storm, forgot the donkey. It was awful
to see the sailors pitching about, with telescopes
and speaking trumpets (they looked
very tall indeed aboard the man-of-war), and
it was awful to suspect the pilot of treachery,
though impossible to avoid it, for when he
cried—"We are lost! To the raft, to the
raft! A thunderbolt has struck the main-mast! "—I
myself saw him take the main-mast
out of its socket and drop it overboard; but