essed some thirty dollars, a good kit, but, better than either,
the most unbounded confidence in myself, and a firm conviction that the
world was an instrument I should learn to play upon, one day or other.
There was no use in undeceiving them as to my real rank and station.
One of the pleasantest incidents of their lives would be, in all
probability, their having travelled in companionship with a gentleman;
and so, remembering the story of the poor alderman who never got over
having learned that "Robinson Crusoe" was a fiction, I left them this
solace unalloyed, and after a most cordial leave-taking, and having
written down my father's address at New Orleans, I shook hands with
the men twice over, kissed the girls ditto, and stepped on board the
"Kingston" steamer,--for no other reason that I know, except that she
was the first to leave the wharf that morning.

I have said that I possessed something like thirty dollars: an
advantageous sale of a part of my wardrobe to a young gentleman about to
reside at Queenstown as a waiter, "realized" me as much more; and with
this sum I resolved upon making a short tour of Canada and the States,
in order to pick up a few notions and increase my store of experiences,
ere I adopted any fixed career.

We laugh at the old gentleman in the play who, on hearing that his
son has no want of money, immediately offers him ten pistoles, but who
obstinately leaves him to starve when he discovers that he is without
funds. We laugh at this, and we deem it absurd and extravagant; but it
is precisely what we see the world do in like circumstances. All its
generosity is reserved for all those who do not require assistance; all
its denials for those in need. "My Lord" refuses half-a-dozen dinners,
while the poor devil author only knows the tune of "Roast Beef." These
reflections forced themselves upon me by observing that as I travelled
along, apparently in no want of means, a hundred offers were made me by
my fellow-travellers of situations and places: one would have enlisted
me as his partner in a very lucrative piece of peripateticism,--viz.,
knife-grinding; a vocation for which, after a few efforts on board the
steamer, Nature would seem to have destined me, for I was assured I
even picked up the sharp-knowing cock of the eye required to examine
the edge, and the style of my pedal-action drew down rounds of applause:
still, I did not like it. The endless tramp upon a step which slipped
from be