d champagne suppers, with a shooting-box and turf
speculations, soon made ducks and drakes of a little fortune. Thus at
twenty-five, our friend Jack was _minus_; or, in the elegant
phraseology of the day, "a gentleman at large with pockets to let."

When a man's riches have taken wings and _vamosed_, when all his old
uncles are used up, and he has no prospective legacy to fall back
upon, he is generally cut by the acquaintances of his prosperous days.
The memory of "what he used to was" is seldom cherished, and the
unhappy victim of prodigality discovers to his sorrow, that

"'Tis a very good world that we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own,
'Tis the very worst world, sir, that ever was known."

Jack, however, was not destined to drink the cup of this bitter
experience. He was just as popular and just as much courted without a
penny in his pocket, as he was when he possessed the means to be
extravagant, when he

"Spread to the liberal air his silken sails,
And lavished guineas like a Prince of Wales."

The secret of his prodigious popularity was his obliging disposition.
His time and talents--and he had plenty of the former, and no lack of
the latter--were always at the service of his friends; and though the
idlest dog in the world when his own affairs were in question, in the
cause of his friends he was the busiest man alive. Thus he fairly won
his dinners, his rides, his drives, and his opera tickets--they were
trifling commissions on his benevolent transactions.

"Jack," one fellow would say, "my horse is too confoundedly high
strung, and only half broke. He threw me yesterday."

"I'll ride him for you, Bill," would be the ready reply; "give me your
spurs, and I'll give him a lesson."

And away he would go, without a thought of his neck, to mount a
restive rascal that had half killed the rough rider of a cavalry
regiment.

"Jack," another would say, "I've got an awkward affair on hand with
Lieutenant ----; he fancies I've insulted him, and has thrown out dark
hints about coffee and pistols."

"Make yourself perfectly easy, my boy; I'll bring him to reason or
fight him myself."

So Jack had his hands full of business. Well, one dreary, desolate
afternoon in March, when the barbs of all the vanes in the city were
looking pertinaciously eastward, and people were shivering over
anthracite grates, Jack Withers "might have been s