e,
especially when they see the shifts to which we are put, in order to
stretch onward at their own pace. However, we must drink when we are
thirsty, as well as they, and if the water happen to be low in the
cistern, which, indeed, is mostly the case with us, we must, as the
rook in the fable did with the pebbles, throw in rack-renting, drivings,
executions, mortgages, loans, &c, in order to bring it within our
reach--for there is ingenuity in everything, as the proverb says, except
in roasting of eggs.

"Come, then, Hickman, set to work at once. My yacht has been damaged by
a foolish wager I made to run her through a creek of reefs at low water,
so that the mere repairs will cost me a cool two hundred at least.
Besides this, I have pledged myself to buy my charming little Signora a
pair of Blenheim spaniels that she has fallen in love with, for which I
shall have to fork out a hundred and fifty down. I say, then, again,
my dear Hickman, money, money; money by _any_ means, but by _all_ means
money; _rem, sed quocunque modo rem_.

"By the way is there not a man there, a kind of under-fellow in
something--agent, I believe--some time appointed, named M'Snitchy, or
M'Smatchey, M'Clutchy, or some such euphonious appellative? Somebody,
old Deaker I think, once mentioned him to me in strong terms, and said
he might become capable of being useful; and you know, Hickman, as well
as I do, that every property circumstanced as mine is, requires a useful
fellow of that particular description. For instance, I dare say, there
are certain proceedings connected with your duty to which you have
no great inclination, and, under these circumstances, would it not
be prudent at least to resort to the agency of somebody like this
M'Clutchy; a fellow not overburthened with too strong a perception of
the necessary pressure. But the truth is, if I proceed in this manner,
your humanity, as the cant goes, will take the alarm; you will say that
my residence abroad has not improved my principles; and that I am rather
strongly tainted with club morality, and the ethics of the gaming,
house. So would you, perhaps, if you breathed my atmosphere, and were
exposed to my temptations. But now I am preaching, and not to the right
purpose either; so as I said before, I say again--money, money, money.

"I am, my dear Hickman,
"Thy friend in distress,
"Cumber."

Henry Hickman, Esq., to the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Cumber:--

Primrose Hill, April