to receive money there, and whose expectations
are never fulfilled? What did I know then,
about that wonderful person, the friend in
the City, who is to do so many things for so
many people; who is to get this one into a
post at home, and that one into a post abroad;
who is to settle with this man's creditors,
provide for that man's son, and see that other
man paid; who is to "throw himself" into this
grand Joint-Stock certainty, and is to put his
name down on that Life Assurance Directory,
and never does anything predicted of him?
What did I know, then, about him as the
friend of gentlemen, Mosaic Arabs and
others, usually to be seen at races, and chiefly
residing in the neighbourhood of Red Lion
Square; and as being unable to discount
the whole amount of that paper in money,
but as happening to have by him a cask of
remarkable fine sherry, a dressing-case, and
a Venus by Titian, with which he would be
willing to make up the balance? Had I ever
heard of him, in those innocent days as confiding
information (which never by any
chance turned out to be in the remotest
degree correct) to solemn bald men, who
mysteriously imparted it to breathless dinner
tables ? No. Had I ever learned to dread
him as a shark, disregard him as a humbug,
and know him for a myth? Not I. Had I
ever heard of him as associated with tightness
in the money market, gloom in consols,
the exportation of gold, or that rock ahead in
everybody's course, the bushel of wheat?
Never. Had I the least idea what was meant
by such terms as jobbery, rigging the market,
cooking accounts, getting up a dividend,
making things pleasant, and the like? Not
the slightest. Should I have detected in Mr.
HUDSON himself, a staring carcase of golden
veal? By no manner of means. The City
was to me a vast emporium of precious stones
and metals, casks and bales, honour and
generosity, foreign fruits and spices. Every
merchant and banker was a compound of Mr.
Fitz-Warren and Sinbad the Sailor. Smith,
Payne, and Smith, when the wind was fair
for Barbary and the captain present, were
in the habit of calling their servants together
(the cross cook included) and asking them to
produce their little shipments. Glyn and
Halifax had personally undergone great hardships
in the valley of diamonds. Baring
Brothers had seen Rocs' eggs and travelled
with caravans. Rothschild had sat in the
Bazaar at Bagdad with rich stuffs for sale;
and a veiled lady from the Sultan's harem,
riding on a donkey, had fallen in love with
him.

Thus I wandered about the City, like a
child in a dream, staring at the British
merchants, and inspired by a mighty faith in
the marvellousness of everything. Up courts
and down courts—in and out of yards and
little squares—peeping into counting-house
passages and running away—poorly feeding
the echoes in the court of the South Sea
House with my timid steps—roaming down
into Austin Friars, and wondering how the
Friars used to like it—ever staring at the
British merchants, and never tired of the
shops—I rambled on, all through the day.
In such stories as I made, to account for the
different places, I believed as devoutly as in
the City itself. I particularly remember that
when I found myself on 'Change, and saw
the shabby people sitting under the placards
about ships, I settled that they were Misers,
who had embarked all their wealth to go and
buy gold-dust or something of that sort,
and were waiting for their respective captains
to come and tell them that they were ready
to set sail. I observed that they all munched
dry biscuits, and I thought it was to keep off
sea-sickness.

This was very delightful; but it still produced
no result according to the Whittington
precedent. There was a dinner preparing at
the Mansion House, and when I peeped in at
a grated kitchen window, and saw the men
cooks at work in their white caps, my heart
began to beat with hope that the Lord
Mayor, or the Lady Mayoress, or one of the
young Princesses their daughters, would
look out of an upper apartment and direct
me to be taken in. But, nothing of the kind
occurred. It was not until I had been
peeping in some time that one of the cooks
called to me (the window was open) " Cut
away, you sir! " which frightened me so, on
account of his black whiskers, that I instantly
obeyed.

After that, I came to the India House, and
asked a boy what it was, who made faces and
pulled my hair before he told me, and behaved,
altogether in an ungenteel and discourteous
manner. Sir James Hogg himself might
have been satisfied with the veneration in
which I held the India House. I had no
doubt of its being the most wonderful, the
most magnanimous, the most incorruptible,
the most practically disinterested, the most
in all respects astonishing, establishment on
the face of the earth. I understood the nature
of an oath, and would have sworn it to be
one entire and perfect chrysolite.

Thinking much about boys who went to
India, and who immediately, without being
sick, smoked pipes like curled-up bell-ropes,
terminating in a large cut-glass sugar basin
upside down, I got among the outfitting shops.
There, I read the lists of filings that were
necessary for an India-going boy, and when I
came to " one brace of pistols," thought what
happiness to be reserved for such a fate!
Still no British merchant seemed at all disposed
to take me into his house. The only
exception was a chimney-sweep—he looked
at me as if he thought me suitable to his
business; but I ran away from him.

I suffered very much, all day, from boys;
they chased me down turnings, brought me to
bay in doorways, and treated me quite savagely,
though I am sure I gave them no