But my mother had made up her mind. She found out an officer who
commanded one of the press-gangs, gave her address, and, having supplied
my father with spirits until he was stupefied, she let in the gang, and
before morning my father was safe on board of the tender lying off the
Tower. This treachery on her part my father did not discover until some
time afterward; and it was the occasion of a scene between them, as I
shall hereafter show. The next day my mother went on board of the tender
to visit my father, put her cambric handkerchief to her eyes, pressed
his hand between the iron bars, and lamented _his_ hard fate, and _her_
hard fate; but when requested by him to smuggle a little liquor in a
bladder to comfort him with, she tossed up her head, and declared "that
nothing could induce her to do anything so ungenteel." Whereupon my
father turned away, lamenting the day that ever he had married a lady's
ladies' maid.
A day or two afterward my mother brought my father his kit of clothes,
and two pounds of his own money. As a war was expected, my mother would
have persuaded my father to give her his "will and power" to receive his
prize money; but my father, grown comparatively wiser, positively
refused.
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