room where the interview took place, waiting to
speak with the justice on matters connected with
his function. These spread the report far and
wide of what had passed, not failing to
exaggerate the praises which had been bestowed on
the young lawyer, and the promises of assistance
made by the worthy justice.

Such help, however, hardly came to be wanted.
Gilbert Penmore had now, as the French say,
given his proofs. He had shown that he could
conduct a case, that he could keep his wits about
him under circumstances the most trying that
could possibly be conceived. It had been seen
that his foreign accent was not a thing that need
by any means stand in his way; a trifle, exciting
some small amount of notice at first, but
forgotten before a dozen sentences were spoken.
Work poured in upon him faster than he could
take it, and a time came when Gabrielle
reminded him with a smile of what she had once
—as the reader perhaps remembers—said in jest,
that she would "certainly commit a crime some
day or other, in order that he might conduct her
defence and win a great name."

In short, this young couple soon began to
prosper exceedingly. They did not remain in
their old abode, where such heavy troubles had
befallen them, but got away to new and
pleasanter quarters, with which no painful memories
were associated. It is only right, however, to
mention, that wherever they went the faithful
Charlotte accompanied them, and made herself
useful in a great variety of ways.

But why do I go on? The essential is told.
Who reads the last words of a story, or listens
to the final speeches of a play—when the
boxkeepers stand ready with their canvas coverings
to throw over the silk and gilding, and pater-familias
gets his young people together with
prodigious noise, and wraps them well up before
they face the night air?

The scenes will all have been shifted by the
time that our curtain rises again next week, and
a new piece will be presented, with fresh
scenery and appointments, and an entirely new
cast of characters.

THE END OF "AT THE BAR."

THE PLEASURES OF ILLNESS.

IT is sometimes both pleasant and profitable
to be ill.

You will observe I say "sometimes;" and,
that I may not give any habitual sufferer
occasion to shake a sad head in bitter derision
of my postulate, I will add, "under certain
conditions." If you be a person who "enjoys
bad health," you will be inclined rather to say,
with gentle sarcasm, that it is both pleasant
and profitable to be sometimes well; if you be
also poor and friendless, my philosophy will
sound like mockery. I cannot offer much
consolation to such as you—I wish I could—
but I disclaim the imputation, which might be
cast upon me, of being indifferent to your
case, or of being like the cruel man who talks
rapturously of rich feasts in the hearing of the
hungry and the destitute. There are wounds
too deep for my philosophy to salve, and to
such wounds I will not presume to apply it.

It is to the strong, to those who fare
sumptuously upon good health every day, that I
address myself when I sing the praises of
illness. I am not going to deal with the subject in
the abstract. Not at all. I have just now been
suffering from severe illness, and I deliberately
say, that I enjoyed it.

You are mistaken if you think that it was
merely a headache, a cold, or an attack of bile.
It was an attack of acute rheumatism, and that
is a complaint which even connoisseurs in
illness will allow to be something worth talking
about. I was laid up for nearly a month, I
suffered continuous agony for two days and two
nights, and during the rest of the time the pain,
though mitigated in violence, continued to gnaw
at my bones and muscles, rendering me at times
perfectly helpless. To complete the statement
of the case, my occupation is that of an author,
and the chief seat of the disorder—which is a
very mild word for it—was my right arm,
including my right hand!

Yet I took pleasure in that attack of rheumatism;
it did me a great deal of good. I profited
by it. Before you call me a canting hypocrite,
one word. I am not one of those who like to
be despised, who rejoice in afflictions, who love
to mortify myself, or to be mortified. As a
miserable sinner that attack of rheumatism did
not, so far as I am aware, do me any good whatever.
In that respect I do not profit by
whipping, I don't want the rod to remind me of
my lessons. No. In the first place, I rejoiced
in that rheumatism because it gave me a holiday.
I could not have ventured to take a holiday if
I had been well, but the rheumatism compelled
me to take one. I could not write with my own
hand, and I never tried dictation. So I made
up my mind at once not to attempt any work.
If it had been merely laziness or mental vacuity
I should have struggled against it, and overcome
it, as I had done often before. But it
was downright physical incapacity. Work was
impossible. I had orders for I don't know how
many hundreds of bricks, but it was worse than
being simply without straw—I had no hands.

It was just this having so many bricks to make
that made me welcome the rheumatism. In
these days we all work too much, and too fast.
And it is the pace that kills—especially men
who race with their brains. The daily, weekly,
and monthly press is the most inexorable of all
nigger-drivers. It has a lash of iron, and it lays
it on by steam. When you can answer its crack
you must, and continue to do so day after day,
and week after week. It will allow of no
intermittent efforts. You must run on, or fall out
of the race. I did not fall out voluntarily; I
was knocked out; and when I recovered the
blow a little, I was thankful for it.

What a relief it was, when I had turned off
the steam, and stopped the mill in the brain!
It was not grinding very fine corn, perhaps, but