Jack, Will, Ned, Charley, and Harry, a token of
Friendship;" this inscription being only varied
as regarded the relative positions of donors and
recipient. The cups were all ready, and nothing
remained to be done but to pay the money and
bring them away from the shop of our Benvenuto
Cellini, which was situated in the parish of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields. A delay, however,
occurred, owing to circumstances which I need
not particularise further than to say, that they
were circumstances over which we had no
control.

This delay, owing to the obduracy of these
uncontrollable circumstances, continued for some
weeks, when, one evening, Tom came in with a
large brown paper parcel under his arm. It was
a parcel of strange and unwonted aspect.

"Ha! ha!" cried the doctor, " what have
we here? Say, my Tom, is it something to eat,
something to drink, something perchance to
smoke? For in such things only doth my soul
delight,"

"I don't believe you when you say that,
doctor," said Tom, quite seriously; for Tom had
fallen more prostrate than any of us before the
doctor's great character.

"Not believe me?" cried the doctor. " I
mean it. Man, sir, is an animal whose only
misfortune is, that lie is endowed with the
accursed power of thinking. If I were not
possessed by this evil spirit of Thought, do you
know what I would do?"

Tom could form no idea what he would do.

"Well, then," said the doctor, " I would lie
all day in the sun, and eat potato-salad out of
a trough!"

"What! like a pig?" Tom exclaimed.

"Yes, like a pig," said the doctor. "I never
see a pig lying on clean straw, with his snout
poked into a delightful mess of barley-meal and
cabbage-leaves, but I become frightfully
envious!"

"Oh, doctor!" we all exclaimed in chorus.

"Fact. I say to myself, How much better
off, how much happier, is this pig than I! To
obtain my potato-salad, without which life
would be a blank, I have to do a deed my soul
abhors. I have to work. The pig has no work
to do for that troughful of barley-meal and
cabbage-leaves. Because I am an animal endowed
with the power of thought and reason, I was
sent to school and taught to read. See what
misfortune, what misery, that has brought upon
me! You laugh, but am I not driven to read
books, and parliamentary debates, and leading
articles? I was induced the other day to attend
a social congress. If I had been a pig, I should
not have had to endure that."

"Ah, but, doctor," said Tom, " the pig has no
better part."

The doctor burst into a yell of exultation.

"What! The pig no better part? Ha!
ha! Sir, the better part of pig is pork. The
butcher comes to me, and to the pig alike;
but what remains of me when he has done his
fell work? You put me in a box and screw me
down, and stow me away out of sight; and you
pretend to grieve for me. But the pig—you eat
him, and rejoice in earnest! And that reminds
me that I shall have a pork-chop for supper. By
the way, is it a lettuce you have in that paper
parcel, Tom?"

"It is not a lettuce, doctor."

"Not a lettuce! Ha! I see something glitter
—precious metal—gold? no, silver! to obtain
which, in a commensurate quantity, I would
commit crimes—murder!"

"Oh, doctor," said Tom, " you are giving
yourself a character which you don't deserve."

"Am I?" said the doctor. " You don't
know me. And after all, what is murder?
Nothing. You kill two or three of your
fellow-creatures—a dozen for that matter; what
then? There are plenty more. Do you know
what is the population of the earth? I will
tell you. Exactly one thousand three hundred
millions eight hundred and ninety-nine thousand
six hundred and twenty souls. How many
murders are committed in the course of a year do you
imagine? You think only those you read of in
the newspapers. Bah! An intimate knowledge
of the subject enables me to inform you that the
number of murders committed in Great Britain
and Ireland, and the Channel Islands, annually,
amounts to fifteen thousand seven hundred and
forty-five. It is one of the laws of nature for
keeping down the population. Every man who
commits a murder, obeys this law."

Tom's hair was beginning to stand on end, for
the doctor said all this with a terrible fierceness
of manner. His strange philosophy was not
without its effect upon the rest of us. We had
been accustomed to a good deal of freedom in
our discussions, but we had never ventured upon
anything so audacious as this.

"Come, Tom," said the doctor, "unveil your
treasure, and let me see if it be worth my while
lying in wait for you in the dark lanes as you go
home to-night."

"Well, no, it isn't, doctor," said Tom, " for the
article is only of pewter." And Tom uncovered
his loving-cup. Circumstances had relented in
Tom's case, and he had gone and paid for his
own loving-cup.

"Pewter!" said the doctor. " Bah! it is not
worth my while; but if it had been silver, now,
why then I might—" And the doctor put on
a diabolical expression, that seemed to signify
highway robbery accompanied with violence,
and murder followed by immediate dissection.
Presently the doctor noticed the inscription.
"Ha! ha!" he said, " what is this? An
inscription! ' To Tom, from Sam, Jack, Will,
Ned, Charley, and Harry—a token of Friendship.'
Friendship? Ha! ha! 'tis but a name,
an empty name, a mockery, a delusion, and a
snare. I tell you there is no such thing in the
world."

"Oh, don't say that, doctor!" cried Tom,
looking quite hurt.

"Ah," returned the doctor, "you will find it
out. I have always found it out; and since I
formed my first friendship and was deceived
—it is now—let me see how many years?—