the door of the linendraper's shop on the opposite corner of Tooley Street, when the gold-laced crier was making proclamation of my loss; but I was too much occupied with eating some pears to attend to what he was saying.
The fact was, that one of the men in the linendraper's shop, observing a little child by itself, went over to it, and asked what it wanted. Finding that it had lost its nurse, he brought it across the street, gave it some pears, and placed it on the steps at the door: having asked my name, the shopkeeper found it to be that of one of his own customers. He accordingly sent off a messenger, who announced to my mother the finding of young Pickle before she was aware of his loss.
Those who delight in observing coincidences may perhaps account for the following singular one. Several years ago when the houses in Tooley Street were being pulled down, I believe to make room for the new railway terminus, I happened to pass along the very spot on which I had been lost in my infancy. A slate of the largest size, called a Duchess,[1] was thrown from the roof of one of the houses, and penetrated into the earth close to my feet.
The other event, which I believe happened some time after the one just related, is as follows. I give it from memory, as I have always repeated it.
I was walking with my nurse and my brother in a public garden, called Montpelier Gardens, in Walworth. On returning through the private road leading to the gardens, I gathered and swallowed some dark berries very like black currants:—these were poisonous.
- ↑ There exists an aristocracy even amongst slates, perhaps from their occupying the most elevated position in every house. Small ones are called Ladies, a larger size Countesses, and the biggest of all are Duchesses.
