Thus, before I had numbered fifteen years, I found myself thrown a waif on the waters of life, free to follow the bent of my inclination to become a sailor.
Fortune favored my wishes.

Soon after the death of my parents, a relation of my mother was fitting out a vessel in Portsmouth, N.H., for a voyage to Demarara; and those who felt an interest in my welfare, conceiving this a good opportunity for me to commence my salt-water career, acceded to my wishes, and prevailed on my relative, against his inclination, to take me with him as a cabin boy.
With emotions of delight I turned my back on the home of my childhood, and gayly started off to seek my fortune in the world, with no other foundation to build upon than a slender frame, an imperfect education, a vivid imagination, ever picturing charming castles in the air, and a goodly share of quiet energy and perseverance, modified by an excess of diffidence, which to this day I have never been able to overcome.
I had already found in a taste for reading a valuable and never-failing source of information and amusement.

This attachment to books has attended me through life, and been a comfort and solace in difficulties, perplexities, and perils.

My parents, also, early ingrafted on my mind strict moral principles; taught me to distinguish between right and wrong; to cherish a love of truth, and even a chivalric sense of honor and honesty.

To this, perhaps, more than to any other circumstance, may be attributed whatever success and respectability has attended my career through life.