ABSTRACT
At eleven years of age my employment was clipping of box-edgings and weeding beds of owers in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester, at the Castle of Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of beautiful gardens; and, a gardener, who had just come from the King’s gardens at Kew, gave such a description of them as made me instantly resolve to work in these gardens. e next morning, without saying a word to any one, o I set, with no clothes, except those upon my back, and with thirteen half-pence in my pocket. I found that I must go to Richmond, and I, accordingly, went on, from place to place, inquiring my way thither. A long day (it was in June) brought me to Richmond in the aernoon. Twopenny worth of bread and cheese and a pennyworth of small beer, which I had on the road, and one half-penny that I had lost somehow or other, le three pence in my pocket. With this for my whole fortune, I was trudging through Richmond, in my blue smock-frock and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eye fell upon a little book, in a bookseller’s window, on the outside of which was written: “TALE OF A TUB; PRICE 3d.” e title was so odd, that my curiosity was excited. I had the 3d. but, then, I could have no supper. In I went, and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a eld, at the upper corner of Kew gardens, where there stood a hay-stack. On the shady side of this, I sat down to read. e book was so dierent from any thing that I had ever read before: it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered
a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought about supper or bed. When I could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket, and tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awaked me in the morning; when o I started to Kew, reading my little book. e singularity of my dress, the simplicity of my manner, my condent and lively air, and, doubtless, his own compassion besides, induced the gardener, who was a Scotsman, I remember, to give me victuals, nd me lodging, and set me to work. And, it was during the period that I was at Kew, that the present king and two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my dress, while I was sweeping the grass plat round the foot of the Pagoda. e gardener, seeing me fond of books, lent me some gardening books to read; but, these I could not relish aer my Tale of a Tub, which I carried about with me wherever I went, and when I, at about twenty years old, lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Funday in North America, the loss gave me greater pain than I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds.
