wn wedding-day. I faintly
remember something of a chaise and four, in which he made his entry
into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride home, or carry her
thither, I forget which. It so completely made out the stanza of the
old ballad--

When we came down through Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in black velve,
And I myself in cramasie.

I suppose it was the only occasion, upon which his own actual
splendour at all corresponded with the world's notions on that
subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble
vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous days, the
ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating
contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's
state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from which no power of fate or
fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge him.

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent
circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them, before
strangers, may be not always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even
when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a
man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and,
steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while
chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a
mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain
Jackson.

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN

Sera tamen respexit
Libertas.

VIRGIL.

A Clerk I was in London gay.

O'KEEFE.

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years
of thy life--thy shining youth--in the irksome confinement of an
office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to
have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to
remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then
only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.

It is now six and thirty years since I took my seat at the desk in
Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the
abundant play-time, and the frequently-intervening vacations of school
days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance
at a counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything.
I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in