governesses. They prey regularly upon the
savings of self-denial. Their depredations
trouble the first nourishment of infancy, and
the last sands of life. The little boy at
school hears of them as terrible monsters
who have blasted his prospects; the old
man feels them stripping his head of his
white hairs, and making the grave seem
preferable to human deceit. Footpads and
highwaymen, burglars and bandits, may be
more brutal, but they are not more dangerous,
than shadowless men. Those roughs may
brain their victims, and take their money,
but they leave the wives and the children of
their victims, their ships, their houses, and
their lands. Shadowless men are so fair,
smooth, and flattering in their proceedings,
that it may be fancied they leave the brains
of their victims untouched. The difference,
nevertheless, is less than it looks; for, if they
do not dash the brains of their victims out at
once with blows, they fill them with the hot
coals of grief until they consume with fire.
The track of a shadowless man can always be
traced by the burning heads he has left on
the way. It is indeed frightful to think how
they fill churchyards and lunatic asylums.

Hurry to be rich, marks the shadowless
man. I know not whether the shadowless
man always says to himself beforehand "I will
take the fortune, fire the brain, and blast the
life of such a one." Probably he pursues his
own ends and chances the rest. Poor Richard
says, "who dainties love, will beggars prove,"
but shadowless men contrive to take dainties
to themselves, and give the beggary to other
people. The precept which presides over
their training is the proverb, "To be poor,
and appear poor, is the devil all over." The
only devils they fear are "poor devils." The
Spartan mother of a shadowless man said to
him on her death-bed, "Remember, my son,
that you were brought up to eat plum-pudding;"
and her son has always eaten plum-pudding,
and has always been surrounded by
a circle of folks who go without. Poor
Richard says, "silks and satins, scarlets and
velvets, put out the kitchen fire," and "fat
kitchens make lean wills; " but the progress
of science has changed all that. The improved
process consists in my putting out the kitchen
fires of other people, in a way which pays my
own draper's bills, and of extracting from
folks who will have to make lean wills, the
materials for my own fat kitchen.

I grew up in the district which had the
benefit of the operations of the great firm of
Bubble, Bill, Dazzlem, Drainem, and
Company. Never were there more insolent people,
and the more insolent they were, the more
they were looked up to. It is quite true;
they were spoken of reverentially as if they
were superior beings. The reverence was all
but universal. Dazzlem especially, the aged
founder of the house, was looked upon witii
admiration and awe. Elderly men pointed
him out to their boys, saying: "That man
when a boy, kept a stall and sold penny
hanks of thread in the market-place, and
now he has branch-houses all round the
world." The ox-herd who, in India, made
himself a king of kings, was boasted of in
Asia, and the soldier

"Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car."

is boasted of in Europe, just as Dazzlem was
boasted of in his native county.

No doubt there are exceptions to the rule
of reverence. There were men getting up in
years who had been better off, who had had
dealings with the great firm, and had been
unfortunate, who were silent respecting them
when sober, but who spoke of them when in
drink with fierce invectives. These men,
however, were spoken of in the town with
contempt as poor creatures, "who never
harmed anybody but themselves;" which is,
apparently, a sufficient slur in itself. The
other decriers or backbiters were old ladies
with long pedigrees, long traditions, long
memories, long tongues, small lodgings, and
small incomes. The ladies of the great firm
were, it is true, as insolent and exclusive as
their lords, and the old ladies did not spare
the stuck-up people.

During years also, when there were strikes
and corn-riots in Doem, the radicals and
lock-outs mobbed, several times, the town
mansions of the great firm. Never shall I
forget seeing one of these corn-mobs when I
was a little boy. The pale, haggard, ragged
men, women, and children, with delirious
eyes and voices, photographed themselves
upon my brain. The mob shouted forth
under the windows the low prices which
they were no longer paid for their labour.
The Doem journal, however, wrote
contemptuously of the mob as tag, rag, and
bobtail; and a man in the mob said it was true
they were the refuse of the riches of the
great firm, the cinders which had smelted
their precious metals. But, these were only
specks upon their glory, the dark sides of
their silvery clouds.

The Earl of Doemshire always dined with
Dazzlem when he passed through Doem.
The generals who came to review the troops
in the garrison, always dined with Dazzlem.
Lieutenants, captains, majors, never crossed
his threshold; but he exchanged cards,
dinners, and visits with the colonels
commanding the regiments. The portrait of
Dazzlem was painted by a great portrait
painter for the Doem town hall. Indeed,
successively, as the members of the great
firm were getting up in years, their portraits
were hung for the admiration, as their
example was orally described for the imitation,
of posterity. It was a maxim with
Dazzlem that "the people will have men
with handles to their names," and he added
to his name both affixes and prefixes. He
was Sir Henry Dazzlem, M.P. Dazzlem
used to invite dining-out wits to his table; for,