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Sometimes my mother indulges in a retrospect, and I love to hear her tell of that May morning when, she bade 'farewell' to her loved ones and dear old Kingsand, and how, wrapping me in a large shawl, she proceeded to Cremyll, a distance of three miles, from whence we were transported across the harbour to Plymouth in the ferry boat. Then came the long and tedious journey to Maryport. Sweet mother! how pathetic to me it all now seems.
We resided at Maryport two years, during which time my eldest sister was born. Often would my mother carry me into the battery, and at the sight of the large guns, and the queer looking helmets hanging on the walls, my little smile would be converted into vehement crying. How little I dreamed then of my familiarity with them in after years! But I must not anticipate.
After completing our stay here, my parents returned to Kingsand, but only for a brief period. It was at, this period that I met with my first accident. Crawling away from the front door I made all possible speed to a large tank of water close by. In looking upon it from an elevated bank of ground, I overbalanced myself and fell headlong into it. When rescued, my nose was bleeding profusely. It was a lesson to me, for during the few subsequent weeks we remained in Kingsand I remembered my 'dive,' and gave the tank a wide margin.
We soon removed to Millbrook, a large village situated a mile and a half from Kingsand. In those days the quay at Millbrook was picturesque with groups of watermen who gained an honest livelihood by ferrying passengers to Devonport and back. But former things have passed away; and now two sets of steamers, well adapted for shallow water (for the landing-piers at Millbrook are governed by the ebb, and flood tide), have almost entirely dispensed with passenger-boats, and the trip from Millbrook to Devonport, or vice versa, costs the modest sum of one penny. People on the town side of the harbour take advantage of this, for on public holidays thousands of towns-people