ble optimism.

"I gather," the Archbishop had said, as he passed the document round,
"that our young friend, er--hem--having exhibited the American nation in
wax, a symbol of its pliability, surely is now proceeding to melt it
down and to return to England. That is a wise undertaking. Syrus, the
philosopher, has told us that Fortune is like glass, when she shines too
much she is broken. Let our friend take the tide at the flood and not
complain afterwards that his ship was too frail. The Panorama has
achieved reputation, and who is of the world does not know the pecuniary
worth of that? Consider my own case and bear with me. I have the
misfortune to prick myself with a needle and to suffer certain personal
inconveniences thereby. The world calls me a villain. Other men,
differently situated, kill thousands of their fellow-creatures and look
forward to the day when they will be buried in Westminster Abbey. We
envy them at the height and the depth of it. This the Panorama should
remember. A successful showman is here to-day and--er--hem--melted down
to-morrow. It is something to have left no debts behind him; it is much
more to have remembered his old friends in these small tokens which we
shall consume in all thankfulness, according to our happiness and our
digestions."

He had seated himself upon a stage chair, gilt and anciently splendid,
to deliver himself of this fine harangue. The lady Sarah, in her turn,
hastened to take up a commanding position upon the throne that had
served for a very modern Cleopatra, while the boy "Betty," accustomed to
hard beds, squatted upon the bare boards and was the happier for his
liberty. For inward satisfaction, the menu declared a monstrous pie from
a shop near by; a plentiful supply of fried fish; three dozen oysters in
a puny barrel, and a half a dozen bottles of stout, three of which
protruded from the Archbishop's capacious pockets. The occasion was a
great one, indeed, the memory of their old friend, the Panorama, at its
zenith.

"I always did say as he'd make a noise in the world, and that's the
truth, God knows," Sarah took an early occasion to remark. "Not if he
were my own brother could I wish him more than I do this night. 'Tisn't
all of us would care to go 'crost the ocean among the cannibals and take
the King of Hingerland in a 'amper. I saw him myself, wrapped up in a
piper box and lookin' beautiful, God's truth, with the crown done up in
tissue beside him. That was b