them home I do not know. The price I dare say has gone up since
that evening. Talking about damsons and apples, I call to mind a
friend in Potter Street, whose name I am sorry to say I have
forgotten. He was a miller, tall, thin, slightly stooping, wore a
pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, and might have been about sixty
years old when I was ten or twelve. He lived in an ancient house,
the first floor of which overhung the street; the rooms were low-
pitched and dark. How Bedford folk managed to sleep in them,
windows all shut, is incomprehensible. At the back of the house was
a royal garden stretching down to the lane which led to the mill.
My memory especially dwells on the currants, strawberries, and
gooseberries. When we went to "uncle's", as we called him, we were
turned out unattended into the middle of the fruit beds if the fruit
was ripe, and we could gather and eat what we liked. I am proud to
say that this Potter Street gentleman, a nobleman if ever there was
one, although not really an uncle, was in some way related to my
father.

The recollections of boyhood, so far as week-days go, are very
happy. Sunday, however, was not happy. I was taken to a religious
service, morning and evening, and understood nothing. The evening
was particularly trying. The windows of the meeting-house streamed
inside with condensed breath, and the air we took into our lungs was
poisonous. Almost every Sunday some woman was carried out fainting.
Do what I could it was impossible to keep awake. When I was quite
little I was made to stand on the seat, a spectacle, with other
children in the like case, to the whole congregation, and I often
nearly fell down, overcome with drowsiness. My weakness much
troubled me, because, although it might not be a heinous sin, such
as bathing on Sunday, it showed that I was not one of God's