really cannot tell; but it is of no very great consequence. Well, it was
on a night about the hour--there again I'm puzzled, it might have been
ten, or eleven, or twelve, or between any of these hours; nay it might
have been past midnight, and far advancing to the morning, for what I
know to the contrary. The reader must excuse an infant of--there again
I am at a nonplus; but we will assume of some days old--if, when wrapped
up in flannel and in a covered basket, and, moreover, fast asleep at the
time, he does not exactly observe the state of the weather, and the time
by the church clock. I never before was aware of the great importance of
dates in telling a story; but it is now too late to recover these facts,
which have been swept away into oblivion by the broad wing of Time. I
must therefore just tell the little I do know, trusting to the reader's
good nature, and to blanks. It is as follows:--that, at the hour--of
the night--the state of the weather being also--I, an infant of a
certain age--was suspended by somebody or somebodies--at the knocker
of the Foundling Hospital. Having made me fast, the said somebody or
somebodies rang a peal upon the bell which made the old porter start up
in so great a hurry, that, with the back of his hand he hit his better
half a blow on the nose, occasioning a great suffusion of blood from
that organ, and a still greater pouring forth of invectives from the
organ immediately below it.

All this having been effected by the said peal on the bell, the said
somebody or somebodies did incontinently take to their heels, and
disappear long before the old porter could pull his legs through his
nether garments and obey the rude summons. At last the old man swung
open the gate, and the basket swung across his nose; he went in again
for a knife and cut me down, for it was cruel to hang a baby of a few
days old; carried me into the lodge, lighted a candle, and opened the
basket. Thus did I metaphorically first come to light.