age is a solution of copper batzen in vinegar!'
When you poke the fire, every spark that flies up the chimney' is a
baiocco! You come at last to suspect that the sun won't warm you for
nothing, and that the very breeze that cooled your brow is only waiting
round the corner to ask "for something for himself."

When the rich man lives sparingly, the conscious power of the wealth he
might employ if he pleased, sustains him. The poor fellow has no such
consolation to fall back on; the closer his coat is examined, the more
threadbare will it appear. If it were simply that he dressed humbly
and fared coarsely, it might be borne well, but it is the hourly
depreciation that poverty is exposed to, makes its true grievance. "An
ill-looking"--this means, generally, ill-dressed--"an ill-looking fellow
had been seen about the premises at night-fall," says the police report
"A very suspicious character had asked for a bed; his wardrobe was in
a 'spotted handkerchief.' The waiter remembers that a fellow, much
travel-stained and weary, stopped at the door that evening and asked if
there was any cheap house of entertainment in the village." Heaven help
the poor wayfarer if any one has been robbed, any house broken into,
any rick set fire to, while he passed through that locality. There is
no need of a crowd of witnesses to convict him, since every bend in his
hat, every tear in his coat, and every rent in his shoes are evidence
against him.

If I thought over these things in sorrow and humiliation, it was in a
very proud spirit that I called to mind how, on that same morning, I
deposited the bag with all the money in Messrs. Haber's bank, saw the
contents duly counted over, replaced and sealed up, and then addressed
to Her Majesty's Minister at Kalbbratonstadt, taking a receipt for the
same. "This was only just common honesty," says the reader. Oh, if there
is an absurd collocation of words, it is that! Common honesty! why,
there is nothing in this world so perfectly, so totally uncommon! Never,
I beseech you, undervalue the waiter who restores the ring you dropped
in the coffee-room; nor hold him cheaply who gives back the umbrella
you left in the cab. These seem such easy things to do, but they are
not easy. Men are more or less Cornish wreckers in life, and very apt to
regard the lost article as treasure-trove. I have said all this to you,
amiable reader, that you may know what it cost me, on that same morning,
not to be a rogue, an