Ah me! that was but a year before; the world had still moved on, the grass covered his grave, and still my story lacked a beginning.
How comes it, then, that this day in May, of all others, should stand up like a wall, as I look back over my life, and seem to me the beginning of all things?
Perhaps this history may show--or, perhaps, he who reads it may come to see that I was right when I said I could not explain it.
It was a great day in London, within and without Temple Bar; and for me, if for no other reason, it was famous, because on that day, for the first and last time, I saw the great Queen Elizabeth.

About eight o'clock, while I stood, as was my wont, setting types in my master's shop, I looked from the window (as was also my wont), and spied two falconers in their green coats, with a trumpeter riding in the midst, ambling citywards.

In a moment I dropped my stick (and with it, alack! a pieful of my master's types), and was out, cap and club, in the Strand, shouting till I was hoarse, "God save her Majesty!" On the instant, from every shop far and near, darted 'prentices and journeymen, shouting and waving caps--some because they saw me do so, some because they guessed what was afoot, some because they saw, even now, the flutter of approaching pennons, and caught the winding of the royal huntsmen's horns along the Strand.
The Queen was coming! I went mad that day with loyalty.

I kicked my fellows for not shouting louder, and such as shouted not at all, I made to shout in a way they least expected.

Through the open door of Master Straw's, the horologer's, I spied his two 'prentices, deaf to all the clamour, basely gorging a hasty pudding behind the bench.
"What!" shouted I, bursting in upon them, and seizing each by his cropped head, "what, ye gluttonous pair of porkers, is this the way you welcome her Majesty into our duchy?
Is this a time for greasy pudding and smacking of lips?
Come outside and shout, or I'll brain you with your own spoons." Whereupon, forgetting what I did, I dipped the white face of each in his own mess, and dragged them forth, where, to do them justice, they shouted and howled as loud as any one.
And now the Strand overflowed from end to end with loyal citizens.