"It must be a great comfort to love and respect a mother!
I've seen them, particularly young women, that I thought set quite as
much store by their mothers, as they did by themselves. Well, no
matter; I got into one of poor Captain Robbins's bloody currents at
the first start, and have been drifting about ever since, just like
the whale-boat with which we fell in, pretty much as the wind
blew. They hadn't the decency to pin even a name--they might have got
one out of a novel or a story-book, you know, to start a poor fellow
in life with--to my shirt; no--they just set me afloat on that bit of
a tombstone, and cast off the standing part of what fastened me to
anything human. There they left me, to generalize on the 'arth and its
ways, to my heart's content."
"And you were found next morning, by the stone-cutter, when he came,
again, to use his chisel."
"Prophecy couldn't have better foretold what happened. There I was
found, sure enough; and there I made my first escape from
destruction. Seeing the basket, which it seems was one in which he had
brought his own dinner, the day before, and forgotten to carry away
with him, he gave it a jerk to cast away the leavings, before he
handed it to the child who had come to take it home, in order that it
might be filled again, when out I rolled on the cold stone.
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