I believe I learned more that way than if I'd had only myself to think about.
There was another girl, the daughter of the poundkeeper,
that I wanted her to beat; and the way we both worked, and I coached her up,
was a caution. And she did get above her in her class. How proud we were!
She gave me a kiss, too, and a bit of her hair. Poor Gracey!
I wonder where she is now, and what she'd think if she saw me here to-day.
If I could have looked ahead, and seen myself -- chained now like a dog,
and going to die a dog's death this day month!

Anyhow, I must make a start. How do people begin when they set to work
to write their own sayings and doings? There's been a deal more doing
than talking in my life -- it was the wrong sort -- more's the pity.

Well, let's see; his parents were poor, but respectable. That's what
they always say. My parents were poor, and mother was as good a soul
as ever broke bread, and wouldn't have taken a shilling's worth
that wasn't her own if she'd been starving. But as for father,
he'd been a poacher in England, a Lincolnshire man he was,
and got sent out for it. He wasn't much more than a boy, he said,
and it was only for a hare or two, which didn't seem much.
But I begin to think, being able to see the right of things a bit now,
and having no bad grog inside of me to turn a fellow's head upside down,
as poaching must be something like cattle and horse duffing --
not the worst thing in the world itself, but mighty likely to lead to it.

Dad had always been a hard-working, steady-going sort of chap,
good at most things, and like a lot more of the Government men,
as the convicts were always called round our part, he saved some money
as soon as he had done his time, and married mother, who was
a simple emigrant girl just out from Ireland. Father was a square-built,