weeks, in spite of walls running down with wet, in spite of the advice and remonstrances of friends who predicted our death, in spite of an infant six months old, who had never been out of doors, I landed my family in my new house nine months after laying the first stone, on March 20, and performed my promise to the letter to the Archbishop, by issuing forth at midnight with a lantern to meet the last cart, with the cook and the cat, which had stuck in the mud, and fairly established myself and them before twelve o'clock at night in the new parsonage-house —a feat, taking ignorance, inexperience, and poverty into consideration, requiring, I can assure you, no small degree of energy.

It made me a very poor man for many years, but I never repented it. I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned a farmer, as I could not let my land. A man-servant was too expensive, so I caught up a little garden. girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals; Bunch became the best butler in the country.

I had little furniture, so I bought a cartload of deals, took a carpenter (who came to me for parish relief), called Jack Robinson, with a face like a full-moon, into my service, established him in a barn, and said, 'Jack, furnish my house.'

At last it was suggested that a carriage was much wanted in the establishment. After diligent search, I discovered in the back settlements of a York coachmaker an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been the earliest invention of the kind. I brought it home in triumph to my admiring family. Being somewhat dilapidated, the village tailor lined it, the village blacksmith repaired it—nay, but for Mrs. Sydney's earnest entreaties, we believe the village painter would have exercised his genius upon the exterior; it escaped this danger, however, and the result was wonderful. Each year added to its charms; it grew younger and younger; a new wheel, a new spring. I christened it the Immortal. It was known all over the neighbourhood; the village boys cheered it, and the village dogs barked at it; but 'Faber meæ fortunæ' was my motto, and we had no false shame.

K

My house was considered the ugliest in the country, but all admitted it was one of the most comfortable; and we did not die, as our friends had predicted, of the damp walls of the parsonage.-Sydney Smith.

97. THE MAN OF MANY SPEECHES.

He

Mr. Twill is one of those men without whom no society, earned or otherwise, is complete. I am afraid to guess the number of associations, companies, and debating bodies to which he belongs; but I have never been to a public meeting, nor attended at a gathering of shareholders, nor sat down to a Idinner at which there was likely to be any speechifying at dessert without discovering him in a place of honour, and, somewhere in the neighbourhood of him, the pale young man with a cargo of notes and the blue bag under his seat. Mr. Twill is a director of one railway company and two telegraphic companies (one overland, and one submarine). He forms part of the governing body of three hospitals and four asylums. is patron of six schools, chairman of a joint-stock bank, and vice-chairman of more financial companies than he can count on his ten fingers. I suppose there is not a more honourable man in existence. His bond is worth gold, and his word is as good as his bond. He has never been accused of pocketing a single sixpence that had not been fairly come by. The public respect him. Society esteems him, and so do I; but I think he is one of the most perfect stumbling-blocks that ever barred a straight road. I confess that I am the only one of my opinion, and I may add that I have hitherto kept my opinion to myself, for belief in the efficacity of Mr. Twill is so deeply rooted in the creed of every man of business I have met, that to have expressed dissent would have been to incur energetic censure; one must never look askance at popular idols. Besides, Mr. Twill is earnest, no man more so; and when a man throws himself heart and soul into everything he undertakes, when he evinces more zeal and does more talking than any other twelve men put together, it is very uphill work trying to convince the public that he is all wrong. Men are attracted by warmth; they will have nothing to say to your cold, brief-spoken toilers, who do a formidable amount of work in silence, and explain their work

in monosyllables. As prices go, one rattling tongue is worth a hundred pairs of good hands. The advice our forefathers gave their children in the fabular days was, 'Dig, dig,' with occasional variations of Fight, fight.' Now-a-days the provident parent, with an eye to his progeny's welfare, will say, 'Talk, my son, talk; there are none of the prizes of life you cannot obtain by talking.'-Pall Mall Gazette.

98. DAVID COPPERFIELD MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN TO HIS AUNT BETSEY.

I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half tide; a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone Jail for child-stealing; a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in last high wind, and make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and equally disrespectful ; and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, generally replied without hearing what I had to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in London.

The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horse-cloth. Something good-natured in the man's face, as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived, though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my lips.

'Trotwood,' said he. 'Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?'

'Yes,' I said, 'rather.'

Pretty stiff in the back?' said he, making himself upright. 'Yes,' I said, 'I should think it very likely.'

'Carries a bag?' said he-' bag with a good deal of room in it-is gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?'

My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this description.

6

Why then, I tell you what,' said he, 'if you go up there," pointing with his whip towards the heights, ‘and keep right on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you'll hear of her. My opinion is she won't stand anything, so here's a penny for you.'

I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Despatching this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my friend had indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me; and, approaching them, went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop at home), and inquired if they would have the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for a young woman; but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.

'My mistress?' she said. 'What do you want with her, boy?'

'I want,' I replied, 'to speak to her, if you please.' 'To beg of her, you mean,' retorted the damsel.

'No,' I said, 'indeed.' But suddenly remembering that in truth I came for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face burn.

My aunt's handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said, put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop, telling me that I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I needed no second permission, though I was by this time in such a state of agitation that my legs shook under me. I followed the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with cheerful bowwindows in front of it, a small square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously. This is Miss Trotwood's,' said the young woman. you know; and that's all I have got to say.' With which words she hurried into the house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance; and left me standing at the

'Now

garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour-window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the window-sill, a small table, and a great chair, suggested to me that my aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.

My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept—and torn besides might have frightened the birds from my aunt's garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt.

The unbroken stillness of the parlour-window leading me to infer, after awhile, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasantlooking gentleman, with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several times, laughed, and went away.

I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of the house a lady with a handkerchief tied over her cap, a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden of Blunderstone Rookery.

'Go away!' said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. 'Go along! No boys here!'