pious Christians, and liked, when he could, to apply them as means of
giving honour and glory to his beloved master and mistress; so that if,
for example, it happened that, when they were not at home, a visitor
called on a Sunday, he was sure to be told by Hassan that Sir Alexander
and Lady Duff Gordon were at church, or even--for his diction was equal
to this--that they were "attending Divine service." Your mother had
valour enough to practise true Christian kindness under conditions from
which the bulk of "good people" might too often shrink; when on hearing
that a "Mary" once known to the household had brought herself into
trouble by omitting the precaution of marriage, my lady determined to
secure the girl a good refuge by taking her as a servant. Before taking
this step, however, she assembled the household, declared her resolve to
the servants, and ordered that, on pain of instant dismissal, no one of
them should ever dare say a single unkind word to Mary. Poor Hassan,
small, black as jet, but possessed with an idea of the dignity of his
sex, conceived it his duty to become the spokesman of the household, and
accordingly, advancing a little in front of the neat-aproned, tall,
wholesome maid-servants, he promised in his and their name a full and
careful obedience to the mistress's order, but then, wringing his hands
and raising them over his head, he added these words: "What a lesson to
us all, my lady."' On the birth of a little son Hassan triumphantly
announced to all callers: 'We have got a boy.' Another of his delightful
speeches was made one evening when Prince Louis Napoleon (the late
Emperor of the French) dropt in unexpectedly to dinner. 'Please, my
lady,' said he, on announcing that dinner was ready, 'I ran out and
bought two pen'orth of sprats for the honour of the house.'

Though I was only six I distinctly remember the Chartist riots in 1848.
William Bridges Adams, the engineer, an old friend of my great-uncle,
Philip Taylor, had a workshop at Bow, and my mother helped to start a