and will go a mile round to avoid meeting an acquaintance. Those
that knew him in his prosperity need never trouble themselves to look
the other way. He is a thousand times more anxious that they should not
see him than they can be; and as to their assistance, there is nothing
he dreads more than the offer of it. All he wants is to be forgotten;
and in this respect he is generally fortunate enough to get what he
wants.

One becomes used to being hard up, as one becomes used to everything
else, by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time. You
can tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and the novice;
between the case-hardened man who has been used to shift and struggle
for years and the poor devil of a beginner striving to hide his misery,
and in a constant agony of fear lest he should be found out. Nothing
shows this difference more clearly than the way in which each will pawn
his watch. As the poet says somewhere: "True ease in pawning comes from
art, not chance." The one goes into his "uncle's" with as much composure
as he would into his tailor's--very likely with more. The assistant is
even civil and attends to him at once, to the great indignation of the
lady in the next box, who, however, sarcastically observes that she
don't mind being kept waiting "if it is a regular customer." Why, from
the pleasant and businesslike manner in which the transaction is carried
out, it might be a large purchase in the three per cents. Yet what a
piece of work a man makes of his first "pop." A boy popping his first
question is confidence itself compared with him. He hangs about outside
the shop until he has succeeded in attracting the attention of all the
loafers in the neighborhood and has aroused strong suspicions in the
mind of the policeman on the beat. At last, after a careful examination
of the contents of the windows, made for the purpose of impressing the
bystanders with the notion that he is going in to purchase a diamond
bracelet or some such trifle, he enters, trying to do so with a careless
swagger, and giving himself really the air of a member of the swell mob.
When inside he speaks in so low a voice as to be perfectly inaudible,
and has to say it all over again. When, in the course of his rambling
conversation about a "friend" of his, the word "lend" is reached, he is
promptly told to go up the court on the right and take the first door
round the corner. He comes out of the shop with a face