Letter From Pisistratus Caxton TO Albert Trevanion, Esq., M.P.

(The confession of a youth who in the Old World finds himself one too
many.)

My Dear Mr. Trevanion,--I thank you cordially, and so we do all,
for your reply to my letter informing you of the villanous traps
through which we have passed,--not indeed with whole skins, but
still whole in life and limb,--which, considering that the traps
were three, and the teeth sharp, was more than we could reasonably
expect. We have taken to the wastes, like wise foxes as we are,
and I do not think a bait can be found that will again snare the
fox paternal. As for the fox filial it is different, and I am
about to prove to you that he is burning to redeem the family
disgrace. Ah! my dear Mr. Trevanion, if you are busy with "blue-
books" when this letter reaches you, stop here, and put it aside
for some rare moment of leisure. I am about to open my heart to
you, and ask you, who know the world so well, to aid me in an
escape from those flammantia maenia wherewith I find that world
begirt and enclosed. For look you, sir, you and my father were
right when you both agreed that the mere book-life was not meant
for me. And yet what is not book-life, to a young man who would
make his way through the ordinary and conventional paths to
fortune? All the professions are so book-lined, book-hemmed, book-
choked, that wherever these strong hands of mine stretch towards
action, they find themselves met by octavo ramparts, flanked with
quarto crenellations. For first, this college life, opening to
scholarships, and ending, perchance, as you political economists
would desire, in Malthusian fellowships,--premiums for celibacy,--