th once fittingly referred to, with a ceremonial lengthening
of Scotch upper lips and wagging of the female head, the party launched
at once (God help me) into the more cheerful topic of my own successes.
They had been so pleased to hear such good accounts of me; I was quite
a great man now; where was that beautiful statue of the Genius of
Something or other? "You haven't it here? not here? Really?" asks the
sprightliest of my cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were
likely I had brought it in a cab, or kept it concealed about my person
like a birthday surprise. In the bosom of this family, unaccustomed to
the tropical nonsense of the West, it became plain the _Sunday Herald_
and poor, blethering Pinkerton had been accepted for their face. It is
not possible to invent a circumstance that could have more depressed
me; and I am conscious that I behaved all through that breakfast like a
whipt schoolboy.

At length, the meal and family prayers being both happily over, I
requested the favour of an interview with Uncle Adam on "the state of
my affairs." At sound of this ominous expression, the good man's face
conspicuously lengthened; and when my grandfather, having had the
proposition repeated to him (for he was hard of hearing) announced his
intention of being present at the interview, I could not but think that
Uncle Adam's sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. Nothing, however,
but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we all
three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a gloomy theatre
for a depressing piece of business. My grandfather charged a clay pipe,
and sat tremulously smoking in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind
him, although the morning was both chill and dark, the window was partly
open and the blind partly down: I cannot depict what an air he had of
being out of place, like a man shipwrecked there. Uncle Adam had his
station at the business table in the midst. Valuable rows of books
looked down upon the place of torture; and I could hear sparrows
chirping in the garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the
piano and pouring forth an acid stream of song from the drawing-room
overhead.

It was in these circumstances that, with all brevity of speech and a
certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while upon the floor,
I informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount I owed
Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the
c