disguises. And, to tell you the truth, my marriage so altered me that,
what with a snuff-coloured coat and a brown scratch wig, with a pen in my
right ear, I looked the very picture of staid respectability. My face
grew an inch longer every day. Nothing is so respectable as a long face;
and a subdued expression of countenance is the surest sign of commercial
prosperity. Well, we went on splendidly enough for about a year.
Meanwhile I was wonderfully improved in philosophy. You have no idea how
a scolding wife sublimes and rarefies one's intellect. Thunder clears
the air, you know! At length, unhappily for my fame (for I contemplated
a magnificent moral history of man, which, had she lived a year longer,
I should have completed), my wife died in child-bed. My father-in-law
and I were talking over the event, and finding fault with civilization
for the enervating habits by which women die of their children instead of
bringing them forth without being even conscious of the circumstance,
when a bit of paper, sealed awry, was given to my partner. He looked
over it, finished the discussion, and then told me our bank had stopped
payment. 'Now, Augustus,' said he, lighting his pipe with the bit of
paper, 'you see the good of having nothing to lose.'

"We did not pay quite sixpence in the pound; but my partner was thought
so unfortunate that the British public raised a subscription for him, and
he retired on an annuity, greatly respected and very much compassionated.
As I had not been so well known as a moralist, and had not the
prepossessing advantage of a bald, benevolent head, nothing was done for
me, and I was turned once more on the wide world, to moralize on the
vicissitudes of fortune. My cousin the bookseller was no more, and his
son cut me. I took a garret in Warwick Court, and with a few books, my
only consolation, I endeavoured to nerve my mind to the future. It was
at this time, Paul, that my studies really availed me. I meditated much,
and I became a true philosopher, namely, a practical one. My actions