with my family, I received the appointment
that had been promised me, and resolved to
work hard, and walk warily for the remainder
of my days; to put the drag upon the wheel,
or stop the coach of conviviality altogether. I
kept my resolution indifferently well for six or
seven years, and in addition to the current
routine of my newspaper duties, threw off songs,
ballads, and epigrams almost as freely as the
clouds throw out the rain drops, and got as
little for my drops as the clouds for theirs. I
published a volume of them, which did not so
greatly take the taste of the public, as to pay
the expense of printing, and I at one time
thought I should have had to go to jail, for
the debt I had contracted for this unlucky
venture. I got over it, somehow; though the
thing was like a millstone round my neck for a
longer time than I can now remember. I think
it was the unsuccess of the unlucky book—I
made a bonfire one night of three or four
hundred unsold copies of it, determined that they
should not go to the trunk-makers—that drove
me for comfort to the whisky again. I took it
as a medicine for the hope deferred that maketh
the heart sick, and found it successful.

              Wi' tippenny we'll fear nae evil,
              Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil.

Such was my experience, as it has been that of
thousands of others—and as long and as often
as I was in the mood for it, I never had far to
look to find companions to treat me, as in an
earlier time—to laugh at my sallies of wit, if
wit it was, and to applaud the lightest
utterances of the rollicking humour that possessed
me, after the third or fourth tumbler. For ten
years I have been in this plight. I have
knocked at death's door and not been admitted.
I have slept in barns and outhouses. I have
been in the hospital, and I have been in the
lunatic asylum; and I am, as you now see me,
a poor wreck of a man, one whom it is
impossible to save, even if he were worth the
salvage. My wife left me long ago; but is still
alive. I dare not go to see her. My children
are all grown up and able to take care of
themselves—which is more than I can do. And yet
I think I was made for better things. I feel
some spark of divinity within me, that whisky
has not quenched, and that I might have been
a good man, if I had had a strong will to
govern me in my early days, and train me
properly. But I never had any guidance except
the gratification of my own will; and cannot
say with Robert Burns that the light that led
astray was light from Heaven. No, it was
light from Hell. You ask me if I have any
hopes or plans for the future? Frankly, I have
none. My mind—or what is left of it—is as
purposeless as the wandering wind. It cannot
fix itself to anything; and it is a wonder to
me, if what I have said in our walk, has been
consistent and coherent. I think, however, if
I like anything, that I should like to get out of
the city and all its ways, and live wholly in
the country. It is my present idea—I don't
know how long it will last—that I could take
the part of assistant gardener, if there were not
much digging to do, for my back is weaker
than my mind, and stooping pains me. But
light work, pruning, training, weeding, and
pottering about, as I might say, just to give
me a pursuit, or the semblance of a pursuit,
takes my fancy for the moment; and possibly,
God knows! might make me respectable for
the remainder of my days." "And your wife?"
I interposed. "Well, poor woman, she thinks
me incorrigible and irreclaimable. Perhaps I
am, but I hope not; and could I exorcise the
whisky demon out of me, it is very likely she
would come back to me. Women are better
than men, all the world over, suffer more, love
more, and are worth more."

Mr. Donaldson would not sit down with me
to dinner in the inn at which we halted. "I
am too proud to sit down with you," he said;
"to proud to afford the waiters an opportunity
to stare at you and think you eccentric,
or out of your mind, for consorting with such a
ragged, rascally-looking vagabond as I am.
Give me the means to get a dinner by myself,
and I give you my honour I will spend it on
dinner, and return to you as fresh and liquoress
as I am now." I trusted him, and he kept
his word; and we walked back to the great
city in due time, when he received his stipulated
guerdon for his loss of time; and made
a solemn promise to call upon me that day
week, sober. He kept his word in this
instance also. Meanwhile, I had spoken about
him to our friend the member for the city—
interested him in Donaldson's talents,
character, and prospects, and procured for him the
post he coveted of assistant-gardener in the
honourable gentleman's domain. He had light
work—a little pleasant cottage to live in—and
humble, but sufficient, wages. His wife rejoined
him; and for six months, perhaps the happiest
of his life, he lived amid the trees and flowers,
and did not get drunk above once a fortnight.
But the end was at hand. His constitution
was shattered. The flame of life burned low
in the socket, and he went off suddenly
without a sign or a groan. Peace to his memory!
He was an acorn that had the capacity for
becoming an oak-tree if circumstances had
favoured; but he fell into evil places, and rotted
into barrenness; or, if the simile be more
appropriate, he was found by a swine—the swine
of Intemperance that consumed and destroyed
him.

FACTS AND FANCIES.

THROWING STONES IN THE SEA.

          WE sat on the shore at Shanklin,
             Howard, and Smith, and I;
          Smith was smoking, I was thinking,
             Howard was idling by.
          He took a stone and tossed it
             Carelessly into the sea;
          And then another, again another,
             And sometimes two or three.

          "What are you doing, Howard"
             "I'm losing my money again,—
          This little pebble's a thousand
             I dropped in that scheme in Spain.