human
Well, he began,
gpt
I must tell you first that I was born in the year 1532, in the town of Monmouth, in Wales, of purely Welsh parents, bearing the ancient name of Evans. In my early youth I kept about the house and tended our flock of sheep, of which we had a great many, on the dear old Welsh mountains. This life suited me well, for I was of a studious frame of mind, fond of learning, and I read and studied much while out on the hills with the sheep. At this time our family was very prosperous; but not long afterwards England began to be torn by those religious struggles, which I doubt not you two older men will well remember, and we were unfortunate enough to have our lands confiscated by that tyrant, King Henry the Eighth, and, from a state of prosperity and the possession of all we could reasonably wish, my family found itself landless, without money, and even without a home. Besides myself, there were two other children, both girls; and what worried my poor parents most was the problem of what to do with us three children. Fortunately an uncle of my mother--a man whose religious convictions had a habit of changing with the times--had retained all his property, and he undertook to take my two young sisters and bring them up as his own children. This kindness on his part relieved my parents of much anxiety; but there was still the difficulty as to what to do with me. At last it was decided, in the absence of anything better, that I should go to sea; and accordingly, although I did not at all care for the idea, to sea I had to go, since no other course was open to me. My father secured me a berth as cabin-boy on board a vessel called the _Delight_, trading between London and ports on the Mediterranean, and commanded by a man named Thomas West. It had happened that my father, in the time of his prosperity, had been able to do this man a service, and that was the reason why he took me on board his ship; and I am bound to say that he was always very kind to me. The time for the next voyage came round only too quickly for my liking, and I bade a sad farewell to my father and mother, who somehow scraped up money enough to go to London with me to see me off, little dreaming, poor souls, that they would never see me again.