Page:The Life and Struggles of William Lovett.djvu/23

Rh the press-gang landed. Then might the soldiers be seen, with drawn cutlasses, riding down the poor fishermen, often through fields of standing corn where they had sought to hide themselves, while the press-gang were engaged in diligently searching every house in order to secure their victims. In this way, as well as out of their boats at sea, were great numbers taken away, and many of them never more heard of by their relations. On one of those exciting occasions, it so happened that an old man and his daughter were out at one end of the town, beside a small stream cleansing fish. The daughter was a woman between thirty and forty, and her father, I should think upwards of sixty, though he looked younger. Being thus engaged when the press-gang landed, and she being deaf, one of the gang had been and seized her father, and was bearing him off before she was aware of it. On raising her head, and seeing her father borne off a prisoner, she snatched up one of the dog-fishes she was opening, and running up to the man she asked him what he was going to do with her daddy. Pointing to the man-of-war at a distance, he told her he was going to take him aboard that big ship. The words had scarcely passed his lips before she fetched him a blow across his face with the rough dog-fish, that made him relinquish his hold. Then seizing her father with one hand, and resolutely defending him with the dog-fish in the other, she kept her opponent at bay till other women and boys came to her assistance. Thus was Honour Hitchens, by her courage, enabled to bear off her daddy in triumph amid the cheers and rejoicings of half the women and boys of the neighbourhood.

Like most children, when very young, my love of play was far greater than that of learning, for I was sent to all the dame-schools of the town before I could master the alphabet. Of my first school I remember being sent home at midsummer with a slip of paper round my hat with my name on it in red ink, given as a holiday present. Of my second school was the being put in the coal-cellar for bad conduct, on the second and last day of my being there. Eventually, however, I was instructed to read by my