ty had emulated the State in the
practice of a truly sanative attitude toward him. At the place where he
went to have his half-crown changed into American money they would only
give him forty cents for it, but he was afterward assured by an
acquaintance that the current rate was sixty cents. In fact, a
half-crown is worth a little more."

"Well, what can you expect of money-changers?" we returned, consolingly.
"And what is going to become of your unhappy beneficiary now?"

"Why, according to his report, fortune has smiled, or half-smiled, as
the novelists say, upon him. He has found a berth on another line of
cattle-steamers, where they don't require a deposit as a guarantee of
good faith. In fact, the head steward has taken a liking to him, and he
is going out as one of the table-stewards instead of one of the
herdsmen; I'm not sure that herdsmen is what they call them."

We laughed sardonically. "And do you believe he is really going?"

Our friend sighed heavily. "Well, I don't believe he's coming back. I
only gave him the loose change I had in my pocket, and I don't think it
will support him so handsomely to the end of the week that he will wish
to call upon me for more."

We were both silent, just as the characters are in a novel till the
author can think what to make them say next. Then we asked, "And you
still think he had been in the penitentiary?"

"I don't see why he should have said so if he wasn't."

"Well, then," we retorted bitterly, again like a character in fiction,
"you have lost another great opportunity: not a moral opportunity this
time, but an aesthetic opportunity. You could have got him to tell you
all about his life in prison, and perhaps his whole career leading up to
it, and you could have made something interesting of it. You might have
written a picaresque novel or a picaresque short story, anyway."

Our friend allowed, with a mortified air, "It was rather a break."

"You threw away the chance of a lifetime. Namesakes who have been in
jail don't turn up every day. In his intimate relation to you, he would
have opened up, he would have poured out his whole heart to you. Think
of the material you have lost."

We thought of it ourselves, and with mounting exasperation. When we
reflected that he would probably have put it into his paper, and when we
reflected that we could have given so much more color to our essay, we
could not endure it. "Well, good-day," we said, coldly; "we are going