of me, that boy has a good face; if he was washed and well dressed, he would be a good pretty boy; do but look what eyes he has, what a pleasant smiling countenance: it is pity! I wonder what the rogue's father and mother was, and the like; then they would call me, and ask me my name, and I would tell them my name was Jack. But what's your sirname, sirrah? says they: I don't know, says I. Who is your father and mother? I have none, said I. What, and never had you any? said they: No, says I, not that I know of. Then they would shake their heads, and cry, Poor boy! and 'tis a pity, and the like; and so let me go. But I laid up all these things in my heart.
I was almost ten years old, the captain eleven, and the major about eight, when the good woman my nurse died. Her husband was a seaman, and had been drowned a little before in the Gloucester frigate, one of the king's ships which was cast away going to Scotland with the duke of York, in the time of king Charles II; and the honest woman dying very poor, the parish was obliged to bury her; when the three young Jacks attended her corpse, and I the colonel, (for we all passed for her own children) was chief mourner, the captain, who was the eldest son, going back very sick.
The good woman being dead, we, the three Jacks, were turned loose to the world. As to the
