I have used remonstrance with her, before now, to a degree
which it shames me to remember; yet, in spite of it, I have sometimes
found myself on a Saturday, after a week's work, without a loaf of
bread in the cupboard. I doubt, ma'am, if any one who has not
experienced it can wholly understand the power of mere hunger to
degrade a man; to what lengths he can be urged, willy-nilly, as it
were, by the instinct to satisfy it. There were Sabbaths, ma'am,
when to attend divine worship seemed a mockery; the craving drove me
away from all congregations of Christian men and out into the fields,
where--I tell it with shame, ma'am--I have stolen turnips and eaten
them raw, loathing the deed even worse than I loathed the vegetable,
for the taste of which--I may say--I have a singular aversion.
Well, among my pupils was Harry here, whom I discovered to be the son
of an old friend of mine. I dare to call the late Major James Brooks
a friend in spite of the difference between our stations in life--a
difference he himself was good enough to forget. Our acquaintance
began on the _Londonderry_ transport, which I commanded, and in which
I brought him home from Corunna to Plymouth in the January of 1809.
It ended with the conclusion of that short and anxious passage.
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