with the doubt and torture of mind occasioned by the sense
of the debt, and the constant reproach in that fellow's scowling eyes
and gloomy coarse reminders? How was I to pay off such a debt out of
sixpence a week? ludicrous! Why did not some one come to see me, and
tip me? Ah! my dear sir, if you have any little friends at school, go
and see them, and do the natural thing by them. You won't miss the
sovereign. You don't know what a blessing it will be to them. Don't
fancy they are too old--try 'em. And they will remember you, and bless
you in future days; and their gratitude shall accompany your dreary
after life; and they shall meet you kindly when thanks for kindness
are scant. Oh mercy! shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave me,
Captain Bob? or the agonies of being in debt to Hawker? In that very
term, a relation of mine was going to India. I actually was fetched
from school in order to take leave of him. I am afraid I told Hawker
of this circumstance. I own I speculated upon my friend's giving me a
pound. A pound? Pooh! A relation going to India, and deeply affected
at parting from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the
dear fellow!... There was Hawker when I came back--of course there he
was. As he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage. He
muttered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. My
relation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment,
asked me with much interest about my progress at school, heard me
construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I
was then engaged; gave me a God bless you, and sent me back to school;
upon my word of honour, without so much as a half-crown! It is all
very well, my dear sir, to say that boys contract habits of expecting
tips from their parents' friends, that they become avaricious, and so
forth. Avaricious! fudge! Boys contract habits of tart and toffee
eating, which they do not carry into after life. On the contrary, I
wish I _did_ like 'em. What raptures of pleasure one could have now
for five shillings, if one could but pick it off the pastry-cook's
tray! No. If you have any little friends at school, out with your
half-crowns, my friend, and impart to those little ones the little
fleeting joys of their age.

Well, then. At the beginning of August 1823, Bartlemytide holidays
came, and I was to go to my parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells. My
place in the coach was taken by my tutor's servants--"Bo