First Sentence

"I AM not only a sailor's daughter, but I may say that I was born among sailors, as much so as if my birth had taken place on board ship; for on the evening on which I came into the world my father was entertaining a company of captains and mates in the parlor of his house, and my mother would say the doctor told her that when he went down-stairs, to give my father the news of my arrival, the room was so full of tobacco-smoke that the guests loomed through it like colliers in the mist of a Tyne fog, so that after peering about, and hitting, as he supposed, upon my father, and saying, "Captain, there's a bundle of troubles for you up-stairs, but she's a fine baby, and as far as I can make out promises to be like you," he found that he had addressed the wrong man."