TALES. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," &c. &c. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1857. [The right of Translation is reserved.] 249. w. 323. THE WATER CURE. "Having our minds sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." CHAPTER I. "Now, if I knew-Lord help me! I often feel as if I did not know-whether the next life be any better than this, whether getting rid of the body be any advantage to the soul -I would gladly die to-morrow!" "By Jove! Alick, I haven't the slightest wish of the kind." We two-Austin Hardy and Alexander Fyfe as we sat over the fire in my lodgings, in Burton Crescent, were not bad types of two classes of men, not rare in this our day, who may stand convicted as moral suicides-mindmurderers and body-murderers. VOL. II. B We were cousins, but at the opposite poles of society-he was rich, I poor. The world lured him, and scouted me; its pit of perdition was opened wide for us both; but he was kissed, and I was kicked, into it. Now we both found ourselves clinging to its brink, and glaring helplessly at one another from opposite sides, wondering which would be the first to let go, and drop to-where? It was the 1st of November. I had sat hour after hour, the MS. of my last book before me; the finished half on my left hand grinned at the unfinished half on my right -to wit, a heap of blank sheets, at least two hundred. Two hundred pages that, by Christmas, must be covered-covered, too, with the best fruit of my soul, my heart, and my brains; else my dear friend the Public would say, compassionately, "Poor fellow he has written himself out;" or, sneeringly, "If these authors did but know when to stop!" Stop?-with life and all its daily needs, duties, pleasantnesses-(pshaw ! I may draw my pen through that word), hammering incessantly at the door! With old Age's ugly face, solitary and poor, peeping in at the window-Stop, indeed! I had been in this agreeable frame of mind. when my cousin Austin lounged into my room. "Do I interrupt you?" he said, for he was a kindly-hearted fellow, though not overburdened with brains, and wholly uninitiate in the life of literature. "Interrupt! no, my good fellow. I wish you did," said I, with a groan. "There is nothing to interrupt. One might as well spin a thread-of-gold gown out of that spider line dangling from the ceiling, as weave a story out of this skull of mine-this squeezed sponge, this collapsed bladder; it's good for nothing but to be a dining-hall to a select party of worms." "Eh ?" said he, innocently uncomprehending. "Never mind. What of yourself, Hardy? How are the hunting and the shooting, the betting and the play-going, the dinner-partics the balls ?" "All over." He shook his head, and a severe fit of |