The captain's room - 1883 Author:Walter Besant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 53 CHAPTER IV. Dkusilla's Story. I Was born in Cheapside, almost beneath the bells of Bow, on October 5, in the year of grace 1753, being the fifth and yo... more »ungest child of Solomon Hetherington and Prudence his wife. My father was a citizen and glover, a member of the Honourable Company of Glovers, his ambition being always to be elected, before becoming Lord Mayor, Master of his Company. These ambitions are laudable in a city merchant, yet, alas! they are not always attained, and in my unhappy father's case they were very far from being reached, as you shall presently hear. There is, I am told, some quality in the London air which causeth the city, in spite of much that is foolish as regards cleanliness, to be a healthy place, and favourable to children. So that, for my own part, though I was brought up in the very centre and heart of the city, with no green fields to run in, nor -any gardens save thosebelonging to the Drapers' Company, I, as well as my brothers and sisters, was a healthy and well- faring child up to the age of eight, when I, with all my brothers and sisters, was afflicted with that scourge of mankind, small-pox. This dreadful disease, to the unspeakable grief of my parents, killed their four eldest children, and spared none but myself, the "youngest, and a girl. To lose three strong and promising boys, the hope of the house, as well as a girl of fourteen, already beginning to be useful, was a most dreadful thing, and I wonder that my mother, who passionately loved her boys, ever recovered cheerfulness. Indeed, until her dying day she kept the annual recurrence of this day, which robbed her of her children—for they all died on the same day— in prayer and fasting and tears. Yet I was left, and, by further blessing of Heaven, I recovered so far that, althoug...« less