t even a sandhill looms
large in Holland. In the main, it is a dreary sordid record of shillings
gained and shillings spent--of scraping for this and scraping for that,
with ever some fresh slip of blue paper fluttering down upon me, left
so jauntily by the tax-collector, and meaning such a dead-weight pull to
me. The irony of my paying a poor-rate used to amuse me. I should have
been collecting it. Thrice at a crisis I pawned my watch, and thrice I
rallied and rescued it. But how am I to interest you in the details of
such a career? Now, if a fair countess had been so good as to slip on
a piece of orange peel before my door, or if the chief merchant in the
town had been saved by some tour-de-force upon my part, or if I had
been summoned out at midnight to attend some nameless person in a lonely
house with a princely fee for silence--then I should have something
worthy of your attention. But the long months and months during which
I listened to the throb of the charwoman's heart and the rustle of the
greengrocer's lungs, present little which is not dull and dreary. No
good angels came my way.

Wait a bit, though! One did. I was awakened at six in the morning one
day by a ringing at my bell, and creeping to the angle of the stair
I saw through the glass a stout gentleman in a top-hat outside. Much
excited, with a thousand guesses capping one another in my head, I ran
back, pulled on some clothes, rushed down, opened the door, and found
myself in the grey morning light face to face with Horton. The good
fellow had come down from Merton in an excursion train, and had been
travelling all night. He had an umbrella under his arm, and two great
straw baskets in each hand, which contained, when unpacked, a cold leg
of mutton, half-a-dozen of beer, a bottle of port, and all sorts of
pasties and luxuries. We had a great day together, and when he rejoined
his excursion in the evening he left a very much cheerier man than he
had found.

Talking of cheeriness, you misunderstand me, Bertie, if you think (as
you seem to imply) that I take a dark view of things. It is true that I
discard some consolations which you possess, because I cannot convince
myself that they are genuine; but in this world, at least, I see immense
reason for hope, and as to the next I am confident that all will be for
the best. From annihilation to beatification I am ready to adapt myself
to whatever the great Designer's secret plan my be.

But there is much