"Why don't you open those letters, Charley?" Livingstone asked at
breakfast, next morning, pointing to a pile that lay unopened by the
letters plate.

"My dear boy, I haven't the heart to do it," was the reply. "They are
all expressive, I know, of different phases of mercantile despair. I
believe these men keep a supplicant, as Moses maintains a poet. The last
appeal from my saddler was perfectly heartrending: he could not have
written it himself, for he looks as tough as his own pig-skin. If he
had, he would be _impayable_ in more ways than one. What can I do? I
can't come down on the poor old man who has the misfortune to be my
father for more supplies when rents are being reduced fifteen per cent.
The tradesmen must learn to endure. They have a splendid chance of
attaining the victory of suffering."

Bruce smiled complacently to himself, and then superciliously at
Charley. He had just received a letter from his banker, consulting him
as to the disposal of a superfluous thousand or so, and he was
hesitating between some dock shares and a promising railway.

"Yes," Forrester went on, "it's very well for you to talk in that
hardened way, as you did the other night, about detrimentals and second
sons. I wonder how you would like to have an elder brother, a pillar of
learned societies, and as tenacious of life as one of his pet zoophytes?
He used to consume quantities of medicine, which was encouraging; but
lately he has taken to homoeopathy, which was quite out of the match.
He told me, lately, that 'four hundred a year and my pay was affluence.'
Affluence!"

It is impossible to describe the cadence of plaintive indignation which