will never preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly,
you will never send them away with half so much to think of. Which
is the better interest: Christ's choice of twelve poor men to help
in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious
bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers? What is your changed
philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud
of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow's son to
tell me about, the ruler's daughter, the other figure at the door
when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the two
ran to the mourner, crying, 'The Master is come and calleth for
thee'?--Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and
remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand
up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any
Sunday night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow
creatures, and he shall see a sight!



CHAPTER V--POOR MERCANTILE JACK



Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch
on life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile
Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy? If not, who is? What
is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor

Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by penny-
weights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife--when
he looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer's