Follow, follow, follow me.”—OLD SONG.

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I KNOW not what friend, or fiend, or both together, put such a folly into the head of my maternal parent; but, like Hamlet’s mother, she set her widow’s cap at the sex, and re-married. A second marriage is seldom a favourable alteration of state; it is like changing a sovereign twice over; first into silver, and then into copper. My mother’s step was of this description! My first father was a plump, short, and rather Dutch-built little person; but the most merry, good-humoured, and kind-hearted, yet withal the slowest goer of the human race. His successor was saturnine in spirit, and stern in temper, a tall bony figure, remarkable for the length of his nether limbs; he was, to adopt a school-boy phrase, a Walker by name, and a walker by nature; and the exercise of this propensity taught me painfully to appreciate the difference between my dear first Daddy and my Daddy-Long-legs.

My father Heavy-sides was what is called slow and sure: which means sure to be left behind. He had a solemn creak in his shoes, that declared how deliberately his toes turned on their hinges; his movement through life was a minuet de la cour. My Step-father Walker’s was a galopade. Considered as Foot Soldiers, or adverse parties of infantry, before one had well marched into his position, the other would have turned his right flank, cut off his left wing, charged his centre, harassed his rear, and surrounded his whole body. They were, alas! literally the quick and the dead, causing between them a race of my toes against my tears, and, if anything, my toes ran the fastest and farthest.

There has been lately a good deal of speculation as to the ownership of a certain poem; but I feel assured that my Step-father was the practical author of the “Devil’s Walk.” The March of Mind might possibly have kept up with him, but no March of body could do it; least of all, such a body as mine, naturally heavy, and furnished with a pair of lower limbs, very different from those of the son of Scriblerus, who made his legs his compasses for measuring islands and continents. Strain them as I would in pursuit of my Step-father, I seemed to take nothing by my motion; those hopeless coat-flaps were always in front; like Doctor Johnson’s great Shakspeare, with little Time at his heels, I panted after him in vain. The pace, as the jockeys say, was severe. It was literally a flight of steps, for he seemed to fly; if any gentleman could be in two places at once, like a bird, that man was my Step-father, or rather Fore-father, for he was always in front. His stride was that of the Colossus of Rhodes; like Robinson Crusoe, you could discern one foot-print in the sand, but the other was beyond discovery. My infatuated mother was nevertheless continually holding him out to me as an example, and recommending me to “tread in his steps!”—I wish I had been able! When his friends, or creditors, have been informed at the door, that he “had just stept out,” how little did they dream that it meant he was a mile off!

It was his pleasure, whenever my Step-father walked, that I should accompany him; such accompaniment as flute adagio is sometimes heard to give to piano prestissimo. He seemed to pride himself, like some pompous people, in constantly having a poor foot-boy trotting it his heels: often did I beg to be left at home; often, but vainly, address him in the language of old Capulet’s domestic—“Good thou, save me a piece of march-pane.” The descriptive phrase of “rocky fastnesses,” was but too typical of his speed and temper; he had no more pity for me, than the great striding Ogre, in the Seven-leagued Boots, for little Hop-o’-my-Thumb.

The day of retribution at last came, for, according to the clown’s doctrine, the whirligig of time always brings round its revenges. My poor mother died, and had a walking funeral, and my Step-father felt more for her than I had expected; but he suffered most in his legs and feet: the measured pace of the procession afflicted him beyond measure; he longed to give sorrow strides, but was forbidden; and he walked and grieved like a fiery horse upon the fret. The slow pace seemed as a slow poison: it has been affirmed that he caught cold upon the occasion; but whether he did or not,—from that day he took ill, went off rapidly, as he always did, in a galloping consumption, and died, leaving me, as usual, behind him. In compliance with his last wish, he was furnished with a walking funeral, and, as decency dictated, I followed him to the grave; though in truth it was sacrificing the only opportunity I ever had in the world, of getting before him.

I have been told that, the evening of his decease, his apparition appeared to a first cousin at Penryn, and the same night to his brother at Appleby. I have no particular faith in Ghosts, but this I do most firmly believe, that if any Body had the Spirit to do the distance, in the time, it was the very Spirit of my Step-father Walker.

FOUR INSIDE.