Concluding that my request is granted, I will now proceed, sympathetic reader, to narrate a few passages of my "strange, eventful history."
I am a disappointed man,—nay, I was even a disappointed baby; for it was calculated that the parental anticipations of my forebears would have been realised on the 1st of May 1792, whereas, by some contradictory vagary of Dame Nature, I entered this valley of tears on the 1st of April! This ought to have been considered prognosticatory of my future disappointments, and the law of Sparta should have been rigidly enforced; for what are crooked limbs to a crooked destiny?
It was the intention of my father (whose name was Jacob Wise) to have had me christened after my maternal uncle, Theodosius Otter, Esq.; but, having selected a stuttering godfather, I was unfortunately baptized as "The-odd-dose-us Oth-er Wise." Nor was this the only disappointment which attended me on this occasion, for the pew-opener having received instructions to clean the copper coal-scuttle in the vestry-room, the basin which contained the vitriol necessary for that purpose was by some means or other placed in the font; and to this day I have more the appearance of a tattooed Indian than a Christian Englishman.
My babyhood was composed of a series of disappointments. My hair was to have been, in the words of the monthly nurse, "the most beautifulest horburn," but sprouted forth a splendid specimen of that vegetable dye called carroty. I was to have been "as straight as an arrow;" but a cup of tea having been spilled over me as I lay in the servant's lap before the kitchen fire, I became so dreadfully warped that I am now a sort of demi-parenthesis, or, as a malicious punster once called me, "a perfect bow."
I had the measles very mildly, as it was affirmed, for the whole virulence of the disorder displayed itself in one enormous pustule on the tip of my nose. This luminary so excited my infant wonder, that my eyes (really fine for green) were continually riveted to the spot, and have never forgotten it, for one or other of them is invariably engaged in searching for the lost treasure.
I was not in convulsions above a dozen times during teething; but no sooner had I completed my chaplet of pearls, than the striking-weight of a Dutch clock which overhung my cradle dropped into my mouth, and convinced me of the extreme simplicity of dental surgery.
A Disappointed Man
My "going alone" was the source of an infinitude of anxieties to my excellent mamma, who was so magnificently proportioned that it was many months before I could make the circuit of her full-flounced printed calico wrapper without resting. Poor mamma! she lost her life from a singular mistake. The house in which we lived had taken fire, and two good-natured neighbours threw Mrs. Wise out of the window instead of a feather-bed. She alighted on the head of Captain S——, who was then considered the softest man in the three kingdoms, and received little injury by the ejectment; but her feelings were so lacerated by the mistake, that she refused all food, and lived entirely by suction, till she died from it.