From my earliest days I have been known as Jovial Jack Junker. I got the name, I believe, from always being in good humour, and seeing the bright side of things. Whatever I ate did me good, and I never had had an hour’s sickness in my life; while if things happened to go wrong one day, I knew they would go right the next. People said I was of a happy disposition; I suppose I was. I always felt inclined to be singing or whistling, and when I did not, it was because I knew I ought to keep silence—in church, for instance, or in the presence of my elders, who happened to be engaged in conversation. Still, I was not born, as the saying is, with a silver spoon in my mouth, nor did I possess any great worldly advantages. I did not trouble myself much about the future, I must confess that. If I got what I wanted, I was contented; if not, I expected to get it the next day or the day after. I could wait; I always found something to amuse me in the meantime. My father was a marine—a man well known to fame, though not the celebrated “Cheeks.” He was known as Sergeant Junker. He had several small sons and daughters—young Junkers—and when I was about twelve years of age, he was left an inconsolable widower by the untimely death of our inestimable mother. She was an excellent woman, and had brought us up, to the best of her ability, in a way to make us good and useful members of society. She was indeed a greater loss to us than to our poor father; for, as my elder brother Simon observed, as he rubbed his eyes, moist with tears, with the back of his hand...
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