nd without more ado, the courtier in lace
seized the manuscript pages, placed them in his breast with his ruffled
hand over his heart, executed a most gracious wave of the hat with the
disengaged hand, and smiled and bowed out of the room, leaving an odour of
pomander behind him.

"Does not the chamber look quite dark," says Addison, surveying it, "after
the glorious appearance and disappearance of that gracious messenger? Why,
he illuminated the whole room. Your scarlet, Mr. Esmond, will bear any
light; but this threadbare old coat of mine, how very worn it looked under
the glare of that splendour! I wonder whether they will do anything for
me," he continued. "When I came out of Oxford into the world, my patrons
promised me great things; and you see where their promises have landed me,
in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny dinner from the cook's
shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune
will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. 'I
puff the prostitute away,' " says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of
his pipe. "There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable;
no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up
with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of
me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and learning
which had got me no small name in our college. The world is the ocean, and
Isis and Charwell are but little drops, of which the sea takes no account.
My reputation ended a mile beyond Maudlin Tower; no one took note of me;
and I learned this, at least, to bear up against evil fortune with a
cheerful heart. Friend Dick hath made a figure in the world, and has
passed me in the race long ago. What matters a little name or a little
fortune? There is no fortune that a philosopher cannot endure. I have been
not unknown as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turning bear-leader,
and teaching a boy to spell. What then? The life was not pleasant, but
possible--the bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, I will go back
to Oxford; and some day, when you are a general, you shall find me a
curate in a cassock and bands, and I shall welcome your honour to my
cottage in the country, and to a mug of penny ale. 'Tis not poverty that's
the hardest to bear, or the least happy lot in life," says Mr. Addison,
shaking the ash out of his pipe. "See, my pipe is smoked out. Shall w