his remote captivity he never came.

Why does this traveller's fate obscure, on New Year's Eve, the
other histories of travellers with which my mind was filled but
now, and cast a solemn shadow over me! Must I one day make his
journey? Even so. Who shall say, that I may not then be tortured
by such late regrets: that I may not then look from my exile on my
empty place and undone work? I stand upon a sea-shore, where the
waves are years. They break and fall, and I may little heed them;
but, with every wave the sea is rising, and I know that it will
float me on this traveller's voyage at last.



THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER



THE amount of money he annually diverts from wholesome and useful
purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the
Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions
of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable
harm he does to the deserving, - dirtying the stream of true
benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with
inability to distinguish between the base coin of distress, and the
true currency we have always among us, - he is more worthy of
Norfolk Island than three-fourths of the worst characters who are
sent there. Under any rational system, he would have been sent
there long ago.