general who once pawned a valuable sword—a
sword of honour it was—wherewith to buy a
horse, and so mounted, he went forth over the
Alps and conquered a kingdom. The story had
no moral for me, for somehow I did not feel
as though I were the stuff that conquers
kingdoms, and yet there must surely be a vast
number of men in life with about the same sort
of faculties, merits, and demerits, as I have.
There must be a numerous Potts family in every
land, well-meaning, right-intentioned, worthless
creatures, who, out of a supposed willingness to
do anything, always end by doing nothing. Such
people, it must be inferred, live upon what are
called their wits, or, in other words, trade upon
the daily accidents of life, and the use to which
they can turn the traits of those they meet
with.

I was resolved not to descend to this; no, I
had determined to say adieu to all masquerading,
and be simply Potts, the druggist's son,
one who had once dreamed of great ambitions,
but had taken the wrong road to them. I
would from this hour be an honest, truth-speaking,
simple-hearted creature. What the world
might henceforth accord me of its sympathy
should be tendered on honest grounds; nay,
more, in the spirit of those devotees who inspire
themselves with piety by privations, I resolved
on a course of self-mortification, I would
not rest till I had made my former self expiate
all the vainglorious wantonness of the past, and
pay in severe penance for every transgression I
had committed. I began boldly with my
reformation. I sat down and wrote thus:

"To Mr. Dycer, Stephen's-green, Dublin.
      "The gentleman who took away a dun pony
from your livery stables in the month of May
last, and who, from certain circumstances, has
not been able to restore the animal, sends
herewith twenty pounds as his probable value. If
Mr. D. conscientiously considers the sum
insufficient, the sender will at some future time, he
hopes, make good the difference."

Doubtless my esteemed reader will say, at
this place, "The fellow couldn't do less; he
need not vaunt himself on a common-place act
of honesty, which, after all, might have been
suggested by certain fears of future consequences.
His indiscretion amounted to horse-stealing, and
horse-stealing is a felony."

All true, every word of it, most upright of
judges; I was simply doing what I ought, or
rather what I ought long since to have done.
But now, let me ask, is this, after all, the
invariable course in life, and is there no merit in
doing what one ought when every temptation
points to the other direction? and lastly, is it
nothing to do what a man ought, when the doing
costs exactly the half of all he has in the world?

Now, if I were, instead of being Potts, a
certain great writer that we all know and
delight in, I would improve the occasion here by
asking my reader, does he always himself do the
right thing? I would say to him, perhaps with
all haste to anticipate his answer, Of course you
do. You never pinch your children, or kick
your wife out of bed; you are a model father
and a churchwarden; but I am only a poor
apothecary's son, brought up in precepts of
thrift and the Dublin Pharmacopœia; and I
own to you, when I placed the half of my twenty-
pound crisp clean bank-note inside of that
letter, I felt I was figuratively cutting myself
in two. But I did it "like a man," if that be a
proper phrase for an act which I thought god-
like. And oh, take my word for it, when a sacrifice
hasn't cost you a coach-load of regrets, and
a shopful of hesitations about making it, it is
of little worth. There's a wide difference
between the gift of a sheep from an Australian
farmer, or the present of a child's pet lamb,
even though the sheep be twice the size of the
lamb.

I gave myself no small praise for what I had
done, much figurative patting on the back, and
a vast deal of that very ambiguous consolation
which beggars in Catholic countries bestow in
change for alms, by assurances that it will be
remembered to you in Purgatory.

"Well," thought I, "the occasion isn't very
far off, for my Purgatory begins to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXIX.

I WAS in a tourist locality, and easily provided
myself with a light equipment for the road,
resolved at once to take the footpath in life and
"seek my fortune." I use these words simply
as the expression of the utter uncertainty which
prevailed as to whither I should go, and what
do when I got there.

If there be few more joyous things in life than
to start off on foot with three or four choice
companions, to ramble through some fine country,
rich in scenery, varied in character and interesting
in story, there are few more lonely sensations
than to set out by oneself, not very decided what
way to take, and with very little money to take it.

One of the most grievous features of small
means is, certainly, the almost exclusive
occupation it gives the mind as to every, even the
most trivial, incident that involves cost. Instead
of dining on fish and fowl and fruit, you feel
eating so many groschen and kreutzers. You are
not drinking wine, your beverage is a solution
of copper batzen in vinegar! When you poke
the fire, every spark that flies up the chimney is
a baiocco! You come at last to suspect that
the sun won't warm you for nothing, and that
the very breeze that cooled your brow is only
waiting round the corner to ask "for something
for himself."

When the rich man lives sparingly, the
conscious power of the wealth he might employ if
he pleased, sustains him. The poor fellow has
no such consolation to fall back on; the closer
his coat is examined, the more threadbare will it
appear. If it were simply that he dressed humbly
and fared coarsely, it might be borne well, but
it is the hourly depreciation that poverty is
exposed to, makes its true grievance. "An ill-looking"
—this means, generally, ill-dressed—"an