ty than originality, "Ask no questions, and I shall tell you no
stories." Having nothing else to do in this my enforced _tete-a-tete_,
I began to conjecture what next was to become of me. At first, I built
no castles in the air; I had got quite sick of doing that aloud with my
late school-fellows, and passing them all off as facts. Still, it must
be confessed that my feelings were altogether pleasurable. It was a
soul-cheering relief to have escaped from out of that vast labyrinth of
lies that I had planted around me, and no longer to dread the
rod-bearing Root; even novelty, under whatever form it may present
itself, is always grateful to the young.

In the midst of these agitations I again found myself in town; and I
began to hope that I should once more see my foster-parents. I began to
rally up my "little Latin and less Greek," in order to surprise the
worthy sawyer and his wife; and I had fully determined to work out for
him what the amount of his daily wages came to in a week, first by
simple arithmetic, secondly by fractions, thirdly by decimals, and
fourthly by duodecimals; and then to prove the whole correct by an
algebraical equation. But all these triumphs of learning were not
destined for me. I found, at length, that the glass coach drove up the
inn-yard of some large coachmaster; but few words were said, and I was
consigned to the coachman of one of the country stages, with as little
remorse and as little ceremony as if I had been an ugly blear-eyed pug,
forwarded in a basket, labelled "this side uppermost," to an old maiden
aunt, or a superannuated grandmother.

This was certainly unhandsome treatment to one who had been lately
seriously telling his companions that he was a disguised prince of the
blood, forced, for state reasons, to keep a strict incognito. It is
true, that I travelled with four horses, and was attended by a guard;
nay, that a flourish of music preceded my arrival at various points of
my journey; but all these little less than royal honours I shared with a
plebeian butcher, a wheezing and attenuated plumber and glazier, and
other of his lieges, all very useful, but hardly deemed ornamental
members of the body politic.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

A CHAPTER OF DISAPPOINTMENTS, WHICH RALPH HOPES THE READER WILL NOT
SHARE--SOME COMPARISONS WHICH HE HOPES WILL NOT BE FOUND ODIOUS, AND
SOME REFLECTIONS WHICH HE THINKS CANNOT BE RESENTED.

My friends will perceive, that at the time of w