d been a failure; or his first dabble in the stocks had not
been followed by the battle of Leipsic; or his senior partner, who had
nine-tenths of the profits of the business, had not departed this life
suddenly in an apoplectic fit, he would have held a very different
position in the world, and probably have been now a denizen of the
second floor over his counting-house in the city, instead of a resident
in Hyde Park Gardens.

An excellent specimen of this class of old gentlemen is "Uncle John."
The obscurity of his early days is so great that even he himself finds
it difficult to penetrate it. That he had a father and a mother is
incontestable; but these worthy people seem to have left this world of
sin at so early a period of "Uncle John's" existence, that, for all
practical purposes, he might as well have been without them. His first
juvenile recollections are connected with yellow stockings, leather
shorts, a cutaway coatee with a tin badge on it, and a little round
woolen cap with a tuft in the middle of it, resting on a head formed by
nature to accommodate a cap of double its dimensions. In a word, "Uncle
John" was a charity-boy.

It must not be imagined that the above fact has ever been communicated
by Uncle John himself; for the worthy man is weak enough to be ashamed
of it, though he will discourse of his early privations in a mystical
manner, with the design apparently of inducing you to regard him rather
as a counterpart of Louis Philippe in his days of early exile, than as a
commonplace, though equally interesting (to a right-thinking mind) young
gentleman in yellow stockings. It _is_ a fact, however, as indisputable
as that Uncle John is now worth thirty or forty thousand pounds.

Emerging from the charity-school, and exchanging the leather shorts and
yellow stockings for corduroys and gray worsted socks, Uncle John
obtained the appointment of office-boy to a Temple attorney. His duties
were multifarious--sweeping the office and serving writs, cleaning boots
and copying declarations. His emoluments were not large--seven shillings
a week and "find himself," which was less difficult, poor boy, than to
find any thing _for_ himself. But Uncle John persevered and was not
disheartened. He lived literally on a crust, and regaled himself only
with the savory smells issuing from the cook's-shop, which was not only
an economical luxury, but had the advantage of affording a stimulus to
the imagination. He actually s