palpitating hearts; his clerks cowered before
him; his maid servants passed him (when
they had courage to pass him at all) with
fear and trembling. The waiters at the
"Cock" in Threadneedle Street, where he
took a fiery bowl of Mulligatawney soup for
lunch, daily, didn't like him. At his club at
the West End he had a bow-window and a
pile of newspapers all to himself, dined by
himself, drank by himself, growled to
himself.

There had been a Mrs. Braddlescroggs; a
delicate, blue-eyed little woman out of Devonshire,
who had been Beauty to the Beast.
She died early. Her husband was not
reported to have beaten her, or starved her,
or verbally ill-treated her, but simply to
have frightened her to death. Everybody
said so. She could never take those mild
blue eyes of hers off her terrible husband,
and died, looking at him timorously. One
son had been born to B. B. at her demise.
He grew up a pale, fair-haired, frightened
lad, with his mother's eyes. The Beast had
treated him (everybody was indignant at it)
from his earliest years with unvarying and
consistent severity; and at fourteen he was
removed from the school of the rigid persuasion,
where he had received his dreary
commercial education, to his father's rigider,
drearier establishment in Ursine Lane. He
had a department to himself there, and a
tallow candle to himself.

The clerks, some twelve in number, all dined
and, slept in the house. They had a dismal
dormitory over some stables in Grizzly Buildings,
at the back of Ursine Lane; and dined
in a dingy, uncarpeted room at the top of the
building—on one unvarying bill of fare of
beef, mutton, and potatoes—plenty of it,
though, for the Beast never stinted them:
which was remarkable in such a Beast. The
domestic arrangements were superintended by
a housekeeper—a tall, melancholy, middle-
aged lady, supposed to have been once in
affluent circumstances. She had been very
good looking, too, once, but had something
the matter with her spine, and not
unfrequently fell down stairs, or upstairs, in fits
of syncope. When the Beast had no one else
to abuse and mal-treat, he would go upstairs
and abuse Mrs. Plimmets, and threaten her
with dismissal and inevitable starvation.
Business hours concluded at eight nightly,
and from that hour to ten P. M. the clerks
were permitted to walk where they listed—but
exclusion and expulsion were the never failing
result of a moment's unpunctuality in
returning home. The porters slept out of the
house, and the clerks looked at them almost
as superior beings, as men of strange
experiences and knowledge of life—men who had
been present at orgies prolonged beyond
midnight, men who had remained in the galleries
of theatres till the performances were
concluded.

Of the dozen clerks who kept the books of
Barnard Braddlescroggs (save that grim
auriferous banker's pass-book of his) and
registered his wares, I have to deal with but two.
My business lies only with blue-eyed, pale-
faced William Braddlescroggs, and with John
Simcox, the corresponding clerk.

Simcox among his fellow clerks, Mr. Simcox
among the porters, Jack Simcox among his
intimates at the "Admiral Benbow" near
Camberwell Gate, "you Simcox," with his
growling chief. A grey-haired, smiling, red-
faced simpleton was Simcox; kind of heart,
simple of mind, affectionate of disposition,
confiding of nature, infirm of purpose,
convivial of habits. He was fifty years in age,
and fifteen in wisdom. He had been at the
top of the ladder once—a rich man at least
by paternal inheritance, with a carriage and
horses and lands; but when he tumbled
(which he did at five-and-twenty very quickly
and right to the bottom), he never managed
to rise again. The dupe of every shallow
knave; the victim in every egregious scheme;
an excellent arithmetician, yet quite unable
to put two and two together in a business
sense: he had never even had strength of
character to be his own enemy; he had always
found such a multiplicity of friends ready to
do the inimical for him. If you let him alone
he would do well enough. He would not lose
his money till you cheated him out of it; he
would not get drunk himself but would allow
you to make him so, with the most charming
willingness and equanimity. There are many
Simcoxes in the world, and more rogues
always ready to prey upon them; yet though
I should like to hang the rogues, I should
not like to see the breed of Simcox quite
extinct.

John Simcox had a salary of one hundred
and twenty pounds a year. If I were writing
fiction instead of sober (though veiled) truth,
I should picture him to you as a victim with
some two score of sovereigns per annum. No;
he had a hundred and twenty of those yellow
tokens annually, for the Beast never stinted
in this respect either, which was again
remarkable in such a Beast. One hundred and
twenty golden sovereigns annually, had John
Simcox; and they were of about as much
use to him as one hundred and twenty penny
pieces. When a man has a quarter's salary
amounting to twenty-seven pounds, receivable
next Thursday, and out of that has a score of
three pounds due at the "Admiral Benbow,"
and has promised to (and will) lend ten pounds
to a friend, and has borrowed five more of
another friend himself, which he means to
pay; and has, besides, his little rent to meet,
and his little butcher and his little grocer and
his little tailor, it is not very difficult to imagine
how the man may be considerably embarrassed
in satisfying all these demands out of the
capital. But, when the administrator of the
capital happens to be (as Simcox was) a man
without the slightest command of himself or
his money, you will have no difficulty in