wrote a letter to me the other day from Lowestoft about getting a ship."

I had written to him from Lowestoft. I can't remember a single word of
that letter now. It was my very first composition in the English
language. And he had understood it, evidently, for he spoke to the point
at once, explaining that his business, mainly, was to find good ships for
young gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium apprentices with a
view of being trained for officers. But he gathered that this was not my
object. I did not desire to be apprenticed. Was that the case?

It was. He was good enough to say then, "Of course I see that you are a
gentleman. But your wish is to get a berth before the mast as an Able
Seaman if possible. Is that it?"

It was certainly my wish; but he stated doubtfully that he feared he
could not help me much in this. There was an Act of Parliament which
made it penal to procure ships for sailors. "An Act-of-Parliament. A
law," he took pains to impress it again and again on my foreign
understanding, while I looked at him in consternation.

I had not been half an hour in London before I had run my head against an
Act of Parliament! What a hopeless adventure! However, the _barocco_
apostle was a resourceful person in his way, and we managed to get round
the hard letter of it without damage to its fine spirit. Yet, strictly
speaking, it was not the conduct of a good citizen; and in retrospect
there is an unfilial flavour about that early sin of mine. For this Act
of Parliament, the Merchant Shipping Act of the Victorian era, had been
in a manner of speaking a father and mother to me. For many years it had
regulated and disciplined my life, prescribed my food and the amount of
my breathing space, had looked after my health and tried as much as