better education; it was in him not the coarseness of manner so much as
the sickening, universal canker of vulgarity of mind. Had Houseman money
in his purse, he would have paid a debt and relieved a friend from mere
indifference; not so the other. Had he been overflowing with wealth, he
would have slipped from a creditor, and duped a friend; there was a
pitiful and debasing weakness in his nature, which made him regard the
lowest meanness as the subtlest wit. His mind too was not only degraded,
but broken by his habits of life; a strange, idiotic folly, that made him
love laughing at his own littleness, ran through his character. Houseman
was young; he might amend; but Clarke had grey hairs and dim eyes; was
old in constitution, if not years; and every thing in him was hopeless
and confirmed; the leprosy was in the system. Time, in this, has made
Houseman what Clarke was then.

"One day, in passing through the street, though it was broad noon, I
encountered Clarke in a state of intoxication, and talking to a crowd he
had collected around him. I sought to pass in an opposite direction; he
would not suffer me; he, whom I sickened to touch, to see, threw himself
in my way, and affected gibe and insult, nay even threat. But when he
came near, he shrank before the mere glance of my eye, and I passed on
unheeding him. The insult galled me; he had taunted my poverty, poverty
was a favourite jest with him; it galled me; anger, revenge, no! those
passions I had never felt for any man. I could not rouse them for the
first time for such a cause; yet I was lowered in my own eyes, I was
stung. Poverty! he taunt me! He dream himself, on account of a little
yellow dust, my superior! I wandered from the town, and paused by the
winding and shagged banks of the river. It was a gloomy winter's day, the
waters rolled on black and sullen, and the dry leaves rustled desolately
beneath my feet. Who shall tell us that outward nature has no effect upon
our mood? All around seemed to frown upon my lot. I read in the face of