waiter and i my musical breakfast and mr changes at home mrs casts a damp on our departure my magnificent order at the public house i make myself known to my aunt the momentous interview i return to the doctor s after the party somebody turns up i my first fall in life we arrive unexpectedly at mr s fireside i make the acquaintance of miss in hovering near us at the dinner party i i fall into we are disturbed in our xiv list of plates i find mr going out with the tide mr and mrs my aunt me mr and his partner wait upon my aunt mr some remarks makes a figure in parliament and i report him the wanderer and i in conference with the i am married our housekeeping mr dick my aunt s the river mr s dream comes true restoration of mutual confidence between mr and mrs my child wife s old companion i am the bearer of evil tidings the i am shown two interesting a stranger calls to see me line from bottom of page for bo read from bottom of page make the same from bottom of page make the same from top of page make the same twenty lines in advance make the same line from bottom of page for a read personal history and experience david the younger chapter i i am whether i shall turn out to be the hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by anybody else these page must show to begin my life with the beginning of my life i record that i was born as i have been informed and believe on a friday at twelve o clock at night it was remarked that the clock began to strike and i began to cry simultaneously in consideration of the day and hour of my birth it was declared by the nurse and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted first that i was destined to be unlucky in life and secondly that i was privileged to see ghosts and spirits both these gifts inevitably as they believed to all unlucky of either born towards the small hours on a night i need say nothing here on the first head because nothing can show � better than my history whether that was or by the result on the second branch of the question i will only remark that unless i ran through that part of my inheritance while i was still a baby i have not come into it yet but i do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it he is heartily welcome to keep it i was born with a which was advertised for sale in the newspapers at the low price of fifteen guineas whether sea going people were short of money about that time or were short of faith and preferred cork i don t know all i know is that there was but one solitary bidding and that was from an attorney connected with the business who offered two pounds in cash and the balance in b the personal history and experience but declined to be from drowning on any higher bargain consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead loss � for as to my poor dear mother s own was in the market then � and ten years afterwards the was put up in a down in our part of the country to fifty members at half a crown a head the to spend five shillings i was present myself and i remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused at a part of myself being disposed of in that way the was won i recollect by an old lady with a hand basket who very reluctantly produced from it the five shillings all in and short � as it took an immense time and a great waste of to endeavour without any effect to prove to her it is a fact which will be long remembered as remarkable down there that she was never drowned but died triumphantly in bed at ninety two i have understood that it was to the last her boast that she never had been on the water in her life except upon a bridge and that over her tea to which she was extremely partial she to the last expressed her indignation at the of and others who had the presumption to go about the world it was in vain to represent to her that some tea perhaps included resulted from this objectionable practice she always returned with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection let us have no not to myself at present i will go back to my birth i was born at in or thereby as they say in scotland i was a child my father s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months when mine opened on it there is something strange to me even now in the reflection that he never saw me and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that i have of my first childish associations with his white grave stone in the churchyard and of the compassion i used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night when our little parlor was warm and bright with fire and candle and the doors of our house were � almost cruelly it seemed to me sometimes � bolted and locked against it an aunt of my father s and consequently a great aunt of mine of whom i shall have more to relate by and by was the principal of our family miss or miss as my 