ceremony of a second marriage with
Alicia; took stores in the city; built a villa in the country; and
here I am at this present moment of writing, a convict aristocrat--a
prosperous, wealthy, highly respectable mercantile man, with two years
of my sentence of transportation still to expire. I have a barouche and
two bay horses, a coachman and page in neat liveries, three charming
children, and a French governess, a boudoir and lady's-maid for my wife.
She is as handsome as ever, but getting a little fat. So am I, as a
worthy friend remarked when I recently appeared holding the plate, at
our last charity sermon.

What would my surviving relatives and associates in England say, if they
could see me now? I have heard of them at different times and through
various channels. Lady Malkinshaw, after living to the verge of
a hundred, and surviving all sorts of accidents, died quietly one
afternoon, in her chair, with an empty dish before her, and without
giving the slightest notice to anybody. Mr. Batterbury, having
sacrificed so much to his wife's reversion, profited nothing by its
falling in at last. His quarrels with my amiable sister--which took
their rise from his interested charities toward me--ended in producing a
separation. And, far from saving anything by Annabella's inheritance of
her pin-money, he had a positive loss to put up with, in the shape
of some hundreds extracted yearly from his income, as alimony to his
uncongenial wife. He is said to make use of shocking language whenever
my name is mentioned, and to wish that he had been carried off by the
yellow fever before he ever set eyes on the Softly family.

My father has retired from practice. He and my mother have gone to live
in the country, near the mansion of the only marquis with whom my father
was actually and personally acquainted in his professional days. The
marquis asks him to dinner once a year, and leaves a card for my mother
before he returns to town for the season. A portrait of Lady Malkinshaw
hangs in the dining-room. In this way, my parents are ending their days
contentedly. I can honestly say that I am glad to hear it.

Doctor Dulcifer, when I last heard of him, was editing a newspaper in
America. Old File, who shared his flight, still shares his fortunes,
being publisher of his newspaper. Young File resumed coining operations
in London; and, having braved his fate a second time, threaded his way,
in due course, up to the steps of the scaffold