ate, nothing but what I could pay to-morrow. Yet I have
had my dreary day, ay, after I had obtained what I call a station in the
world. All of a sudden, about five years ago, everything seemed to go
wrong with me--horses became sick or died, people who owed me money broke
or ran away, my house caught fire, in fact, everything went against me;
and not from any mismanagement of my own. I looked round for help,
but--what do you think? nobody would help me. Somehow or other it had
got abroad that I was in difficulties, and everybody seemed disposed to
avoid me, as if I had got the plague. Those who were always offering me
help when I wanted none, now, when they thought me in trouble, talked of
arresting me. Yes, two particular friends of mine, who had always been
offering me their purses when my own was stuffed full, now talked of
arresting me, though I only owed the scoundrels a hundred pounds each;
and they would have done so, provided I had not paid them what I owed
them; and how did I do that? Why, I was able to do it because I found a
friend--and who was that friend? Why, a man who has since been hung, of
whom everybody has heard, and of whom everybody for the next hundred
years will occasionally talk.

"One day, whilst in trouble, I was visited by a person I had occasionally
met at sporting-dinners. He came to look after a Suffolk Punch, the best
horse, by-the-bye, that anybody can purchase to drive, it being the only
animal of the horse kind in England that will pull twice at a dead
weight. I told him that I had none at that time that I could recommend;
in fact, that every horse in my stable was sick. He then invited me to
dine with him at an inn close by, and I was glad to go with him, in the
hope of getting rid of unpleasant thoughts. After dinner, during which
he talked nothing but slang, observing I looked very melancholy, he asked
me what was the matter with me, and I, my heart being opened by the wine
he had made me drink, told him my circumstances without reserve. With an
oath or two for not having treated him at first like a friend, he said he
would soon set me all right; and pulling out two hundred pounds, told me
to pay him when I could. I felt as I never felt before; however, I took
his notes, paid my sneaks, and in less than three months was right again,
and had returned him his money. On paying it to him, I said that I had
now a Punch which would just suit him, saying that I would give it to