to them. Don't fancy they are too old--try 'em. And they will remember
you, and bless you in future days; and their gratitude shall accompany
your dreary after life; and they shall meet you kindly when thanks for
kindness are scant. O mercy! shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave
me, Captain Bob? or the agonies of being in debt to Hawker? In that very
term, a relation of mine was going to India. I actually was fetched from
school in order to take leave of him. I am afraid I told Hawker of this
circumstance. I own I speculated upon my friend's giving me a pound. A
pound? Pooh! A relation going to India, and deeply affected at parting
from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow!
. . . There was Hawker when I came back--of course there he was. As
he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage. He muttered
curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. My relation, about
to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, asked me with much
interest about my progress at school, heard me construe a passage of
Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was then engaged; gave
me a God bless you, and sent me back to school; upon my word of honor,
without so much as a half-crown! It is all very well, my dear sir, to
say that boys contract habits of expecting tips from their parents'
friends, that they become avaricious, and so forth. Avaricious! fudge!
Boys contract habits of tart and toffee eating, which they do not carry
into after life. On the contrary, I wish I DID like 'em. What raptures
of pleasure one could have now for five shillings, if one could but pick
it off the pastry-cook's tray! No. If you have any little friends at
school, out with your half-crowns, my friend, and impart to those little
ones the little fleeting joys of their age.

Well, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy-tide holidays
came, and I was to go to my parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells. My
place in the coach was taken by my tutor's servants--"Bolt-in-Tun,"