alf of all he has in the world?

Now, if I were, instead of being Potts, a certain great writer that we
all know and delight in, I would improve the occasion here by asking my
reader does he always himself do the right thing? I would say to him,
perhaps with all haste to anticipate his answer, "Of course you do. You
never pinch your children, or kick your wife out of bed; you are a model
father and a churchwarden; but I am only a poor apothecary's son brought
up in precepts of thrift and the Dublin Pharmacopoeia;" and I own to
you, when I placed the half of my twenty-pound crisp clean bank note
inside of that letter, I felt I was figuratively cutting myself in two.
But I did it "like a man," if that be a proper phrase for an act which
I thought godlike. And oh, take my word for it, when a sacrifice has
n't cost you a coach-load of regrets and a shopful of hesitations about
making it, it is of little worth. There's a wide difference between the
gift of a sheep from an Australian farmer, or the present of a child's
pet lamb, even though the sheep be twice the size of the lamb.

I gave myself no small praise for what I had done, much figurative
patting on the back, and a vast deal of that very ambiguous consolation
which beggars in Catholic countries bestow in change for alms, by
assurance that it will be remembered to you in purgatory.

"Well," thought I, "the occasion is n't very far off, for my purgatory
begins to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXIX. ON FOOT AND IN LOW COMPANY

I was in a tourist locality, and easily provided myself with a light
equipment for the road, resolved at once to take the footpath in life
and "seek my fortune." I use these words simply as the expression of the
utter uncertainty which prevailed as to whither I should go, and what do
when I got there.

If there be few more joyous things in life than to start off on foot
with three or four choice companions, to ramble through some fine
country rich in scenery, varied in character and interesting in story,
there are few more lonely sensations than to set out by oneself, not
very decided what way to take, and with very little money to take it.

One of the most grievous features of small means is, certainly, the
almost exclusive occupation it gives the mind as to every, even the most
trivial, incident that involves cost. Instead of dining on fish and fowl
and fruit, you feel eating so many groschen and kreutzers. You are not
drinking wine, your bever