As often as not, he would catch his foot in the chain or the punt-pole, and arrive on his chest.
Amenda used to condole with him.

"Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself," I heard her telling him one morning; "she could never have taught you to walk.

What you want is a go-cart." He was a willing lad, but his stupidity was super-natural.

A comet appeared in the sky that year, and everybody was talking about it.

One day he said to me:-- "There's a comet coming, ain't there, sir ?" He talked about it as though it were a circus.
"Coming!" I answered, "it's come.