(Aged nine.)



THE subject of our present narrative would appear to have devoted
himself to the pirate profession at a comparatively early age. We
find him in command of a splendid schooner of one hundred guns
loaded to the muzzle, ere yet he had had a party in honour of his
tenth birthday.

It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by a Latin-
grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due from one man of
honour to another. - Not getting it, he privately withdrew his
haughty spirit from such low company, bought a second-hand pocket-
pistol, folded up some sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of
Spanish liquorice-water, and entered on a career of valour.

It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his name) through
the commencing stages of his story. Suffice it, that we find him
bearing the rank of Capt. Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a
crimson hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner
'The Beauty,' in the China seas. It was a lovely evening; and, as
his crew lay grouped about him, he favoured them with the following
melody:


O landsmen are folly!
O pirates are jolly!
O diddleum Dolly,
Di!