his bold, this eventful measure. My ruin or my earthly
happiness lies entirely in your hands. Can I doubt which way your
kind heart will lead you, and that you will come to the aid of your
affectionate brother-in-law? Charles Honeyman."

"Our little Clive has been to London on a visit to his uncles and to the
Hermitage, Clapham, to pay his duty to his step-grandmother, the wealthy
Mrs. Newcome. I pass over words disparaging of myself which the child
in his artless prattles subsequently narrated. She was very gracious to
him, and presented him with a five-pound note, a copy of Kirk White's
Poems, and a work called Little Henry and his Bearer, relating to India,
and the excellent Catechism of our Church. Clive is full of humour, and
I enclose you a rude scrap representing the Bishopess of Clapham, as
she is called,--the other figure is a rude though entertaining sketch of
some other droll personage.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, etc."

V. "My Dear Colonel;--The Rev. Marcus Flather has just written me a
letter at which I am greatly shocked and perplexed, informing me that my
brother Charles has given him a draft upon you for two hundred and fifty
pounds, when goodness knows it is not you but we who are many, many
hundred pounds debtors to you. Charles has explained that he drew the
bill at your desire, that you wrote to say you would be glad to serve
him in any way, and that the money is wanted to make his fortune. Yet
I don't know--poor Charles is always going to make his fortune and has
never done it. That school which he bought, and for which you and me
between us paid the purchase-money, turned out no good, and the only
pupils left at the end of the first half-year were two woolly-headed
poor little mulattos, whose father was in gaol at St. Kitt's, and whom
I kept actually in my own second-floor back room whilst the lawyers were
settling things, and Charles was away in France, and until my dearest
little Clive came to live with me.

"Then, as he was too small for a great school, I thought Clive could not
do better than stay with his old aunt and have his Uncle Charles for a
tutor, who is one of the finest scholars in the world. I wish you could
hear him in the pulpit. His delivery is grander and more impressive
than any divine now in England. His sermons you have subscribed for,
and likewise his book of elegant poems, which are pronounced to be very
fine.

"When he returned from Calais, and those horrid lawyers