se; when Baron Geramb, frizzed,
moustached, and decorated, lounged lazily along on the arm of Admiral
Payne, followed by a gorgeously-equipped chasseur,--a rare sight in
those days! Nor is it altogether an old man's prejudice makes me think
that the leaders of fashion in those times had more unmistakably the
signs of being Grand Seigneurs than the men of our own day.

I have said that the tide of fortune had turned with me, and to an
extent scarcely credible. Many days saw my gains above a guinea; once
or twice they more than doubled that amount. I have frequently read in
newspapers announcements of the fortunes accumulated by men in the very
humblest stations,--statements which, with less experience than my own,
I might have hesitated to believe; but now I know them to be credible. I
know, too, that many of the donors who contemptuously threw their penny
as they passed were far poorer than the recipient of their bounty.

If time did not reconcile me to my lot, yet a certain hardihood to brave
destiny in any shape fortified me. I reasoned repeatedly with myself on
this wise: Fate can scarcely have anything lower in store for me; from
this there can be no descent in fortune. If, then, I can here maintain
within me the feelings which moved me in happier days, and live
unchanged in the midst of what might have been degradation, there is yet
a hope that I may emerge to hold a worthy station among my fellow-men.

I will not affirm that this feeling was not heightened by an almost
resentful sense of the world's treatment of me,--a feeling which, combat
how I would, hourly gained more and more possession of me. To struggle
against this growing misanthropy, I formed the resolve that I would
devote all my earnings of each Sunday to charity. It was but too easy,
in my walk of life, for me to know objects of want and suffering. The
little close in which I lived--near Seven Dials--was filled with such;
and amongst them I now dispensed the seventh of my gains,--in reality
far more, since Sunday almost equalled two entire days in profit. Thus
did I vacillate betwixt good and evil influences,--now yielding, now
resisting,--but always gaining some little advantage over
selfishness and narrow-mindedness, by the training of that best of
teachers,--adversity. How my trials might have ended, had the course of
my life gone on uninterruptedly, I cannot even guess. Whether the bad
might have gained the ascendant, or the good triumphed, I kno