"May be he never saw a Teeshin pictur, Mrs. Turnbull? if he had, he could not help seeing the likeness."

"Now, I declare, Mr. Manningtree, you make me all no how, indeed you do for shame! But we was a talking about that there young chap, Dick Wallingford, I think as how he takes on, and gives himself great airs."

"So do I, Mrs. Turnbull.

I can't abide cunning people."

He's a cunning fellow, too; and

"No, nor I neither, Mr. Manningtree."

"Why, would you believe it, the day after James, the new footman, came, the young master was mad because he had not cleaned the shoes of Master Richard (as we are told to call him); for I had been telling him, the evening before, as how he was only the son of a poor trumpery farmer, as was taken in out of charity, to divart the young squire. Well, when the young chap finds his shoes dirty, what does he do but begins cleaning 'em with his pocket handkerchief and some water, when in comes Mary, housemaid, and tells him, it is a shame for him to dirt the room after such a fashion, and that it was easy to see he was not a gentleman born, or he wou'd not go for to do such a thing as to clean his own shoes. Mary, housemaid, spoke so loud, that the young master heard her, came into the room, ordered her to leave it directly, and then sent for me, and said, 'If ever any one neglected to clean the shoes of Master Richard, he would tell his papa, and get them discharged.' Would you believe it, Mrs. Turnbull, that there young hypocrite turns round in a jiffy, and says, he hopes Master Percy won't say another word about the matter, for that he doesn't mind doing every thing for himself, just the same as he'd have to do, if he was in his father's house; and then the young master goes up to him, and puts his arm round his shoulders, quite like a brother, and says, 'But you sha'n't, my dear Richard; the servants shall wait on you the same as on me, that they shall; so mind what I say, Manningtree, or I'll tell my papa.

"Did I ever?-no, I never heard of such doings. No good will come of it, Mr. Manningtree."

The good temper, for which I always had credit, and the desire of not giving trouble, which I invariably evinced, were insufficient to conciliate the good-will of the servants of my patron, and many were the slights and humiliations they endeavoured to inflict on me, but which this same good temper of mine, and a certain portion of good sense, not often, met with in people of my age, lightened the sense of.

Time passed rapidly on, and we had each now completed our nineteenth year. Percy was to be entered at Christ Church

College, as a gentleman commoner, and I was to be placed as a clerk in the banking-house of Mortimer, Allison and Finsbury, in which my benefactor was still a sleeping partner.

"How I wish you were coming to Oxford with me, my dear Richard," said Percy to me, a few days before the separation, to which both looked forward with so much dread.

"I too wish it," answered I, "more, much more, than I can tell you; but your father wills it otherwise."

66

'Greatly as I shall regret our separation, Richard, I prefer it to having you entered as a sizer at Christ Church; that I could not bear, brought up as we have been like brothers."

"I should feel no humiliation in it, dear Percy," said I, "for though you have ever treated me as an equal, I have not forgotten the difference in our stations: the poor farmer's son knows that his cannot be the same path as that traced for the son of his generous benefactor."

"That is precisely the only fault I ever have had to find with you, Richard. You are ever reminding me of a kindness on the part of my father, that has been amply repaid by the advantages I have derived from the example of perseverance and application which you have given to his half-nay, more than half-spoilt son, who, without it, might have been now a dunce, and disappointed his too indulgent father's expectations."

Percy Mortimer entered Christ Church a few days after the above conversation; and on the same day, I left the abode in which I had passed so many happy days, and became an inmate in the banking-house of Messrs. Mortimer, Allison and Finsbury, in Mincing-lane. I had never neglected my parents, or sisters and brothers, during my residence at Mr. Mortimer's. The pocket-money, and gifts so liberally supplied to me by Percy, were nearly all transferred to my family; and whenever I could snatch an hour from my ocon studies, or the recreations of my companion, which I was expected to share, it was devoted to the instruction of my brothers and sisters. Of these, one amply repaid the trouble and pains I had taken for her improvement, the gentle and pretty Margaret, who applied herself with diligence to the tasks I assigned her. To her, now in her fourteenth year, I transferred the few books I could call my own, consisting of Goldsmith's Abridged Histories," Milton's "Paradise Lost," Thomson's "Seasons," and the "Spectator," and having taken an affectionate leave of my family, I bade adieu to the country.

Great was the disappointment I experienced on my arrival at the dingy house in Mincing-lane, where I was henceforth to take up my residence. Impressed with a vivid notion of the grandeur of London, the little I had seen of it in my passage

through the crowded streets of the city, accorded so little with my pre-conceived ideas, that I sank back into the coach in which I had seated myself and placed my luggage on leaving the stage-coach, disheartened and oppressed by the sense of loneliness peculiar to a stranger on the first entrance into a crowded capital, in which, among the dense masses of people he sees moving about him, he knows not a single face, expects not to see a single hand held out to welcome him with a kindly pressure, or a familiar voice to greet his ear. The dingy banking-house in Mincing-lane achieved the gloom that was stealing over my feelings; and, as I paid the coachman the sum demanded, (being only thrice the amount to which he was entitled,) and asked a surly-looking porter who stood at the door to assist me in removing my luggage into the dwelling, I experienced a sadness and sense of isolation, to which I had been hitherto a stranger. Cold and formal was the reception given to me by the partners of the bank, to one of whom I presented a letter of introduction from Mr. Mortimer. They eyed me with scrutinizing glances, then exchanged looks, in which little of approval was visible, and the effect of which was not calculated to exhilarate the depressed spirits of a stranger like myself.

"As you are probably fatigued by your journey, you can retire to the apartment prepared for you," said Mr. Allison, "and to-morrow you will enter on your duty. The porter will show you your room.'

I felt thankful for permission to retire, and, bowing, hastened to avail myself of it; but my gratitude was diminished, when I saw that the hour of closing the bank had arrived, as all the clerks were withdrawing from their high stools, and hurrying away with an activity that denoted their satisfaction at being released from their daily uninteresting toil.

"I thought you were the new clerk, when you asked me to help you in with your trunk," said the porter, when I requested him to show me my room.

"You were never afore in Lunnun, I take it?"

"Never," answered I.

"I guessed as much, when I seed you give that there coachman three times more than his fare. You mustn't do that, for its no use whatsomever being himposed on, and only gets a man laughed at."

"I thank you for your advice," replied I, and the civility with which I said so, made John Stebbings (who be it known to our readers had a passion for giving advice), my friend for life.

"You will find Mrs. Chatterton, the housekeeper, a very good and tidy woman; and, provided you keeps good hours,

and is regular at meals, she will make you very comfortable," said John Stebbings, as he conducted me up stairs.

He opened the door of a very gloomy room, in which was a table laid for dinner; and, seated by the fire, a respectable looking elderly woman, with considerable remains of beauty, who, with spectacles on nose, was busily employed in knitting a stocking.

"Here be the new clerk, Mrs. Chatterton," said John Stebbings, raising his voice to a very loud key.

"What do you say, Mr. Stebbings?" answered the old dame, turning round leisurely.

"This here young gentleman be's the new clerk," repeated Stebbings, in the tone of a Stentor.

"Why don't you speak a little louder, Mr. Stebbings?—I never hear a word you say."

"Speak a little louder indeed; why, hang me, if the old lady don't get deafer and deafer every day," and, approaching close to her ear, he bellowed rather than spoke, "This here be's the new clerk."

"Then why couldn't you say so at first, Mr. Stebbings?"?

"As if I did'nt. Well, it surely is a great misfortune to be deaf. I wouldn't be deaf for all the world,-that I wouldn't, said John Stebbings.

"How do you do, young gentleman?" said Mrs. Chatterton, civilly, and with a most benevolent smile: "your bedroom is prepared for you, and dinner will be served up in a few minutes. This way, if you please. What did you say your name was?" "Richard Wallingford, ma'am. "

"What?"

"Richard Wallingford, ma'am," and I spoke louder than I had ever spoken before.

"Speak a little louder, young man; it's very strange no one will speak loud enough at present to be heard. When I was young, every body spoke loud enough."

Ay, ay, I warrant me you weren't as deaf as a post then, as you are now," said John Stebbings, as he proceeded towards the door, with my trunk on his shoulders; and scarcely had he uttered the remark, when, coming in contact with a chair which he had not observed, and which had been left out of its place by Mrs. Chatterton, who had been winding cotton on its back, he stumbled over it, and fell to the ground, while the trunk, coming on a pile of plates placed before the fire, crashed them in pieces. "Was there ever such a man?" said Mrs. Chatterton, "always breaking and falling over every thing! Why can't you wear spectacles, John Stebbings? You're as blind as a bat, that you are; but you won't allow it-you're so obstinate."

"No more blinder than my neighbours," growled John Stebbings, "and not deaf into the bargain, as some of us be," and he began rubbing his leg, which had sustained some injury by its contact with the chair.

"Bless me! if he hasn't broken a dozen of plates. What will the firm say, when they see four shillings down again for plates?"

"I've broken my shin, and that's worse nor the plates," muttered Stebbings; " but that comes of putting chairs out in the middle of the room to throw people down."

"Here's a glass of cordial, it will do you good, Mr. Stebbings," and the old lady opened a cupboard, and poured out a glass of some liquid which she handed to Stebbings, who, nothing loth, drank to her good health, while she murmured, ""Tis a pity he's so blind, poor man; I wish he would wear spectacles :" and he having emptied the glass of its contents, turned to me and remarked, that "there was not a better-hearted woman alive than Mrs. Chatterton, and it was a great pity she was so deaf."

CHAPTER II.

THE bed-chamber allotted to me, though small, and furnished in the most homely style, was clean, an agreeable fact which Mrs. Chatterton called on me to remark, as she installed me in it.

"Here is soap for you, young man,-good old brown Windsor soap. The firm allows a cake a month to each clerk, which is ample for those who are not so stupid as some are, who forget it in the wash-hand basin. Such people never come to much good; for how can a man take care of great things, who begins by forgetting small? Here is a chest of drawers for your clothes, and a boot-jack for your separate use. The firm are very liberal in allowing a boot-jack to each room. You are the only clerk who has a bed-chamber to himself; and, therefore, this bootjack belongs exclusively to this room. I have had the initials of the firm cut on it, M. A. F.; it prevents mistake. I will leave you now, and order dinner to be served; in five minutes more it will be on the table. You will just have time to wash your hands, and smooth down your hair. Hold the candle, Mr. Stebbings, if you please, not so close to my cap for fear of fire. I wish you would wear spectacles, indeed I do."

"And I, and every one else who knows you, wish that you would have a speaking-trumpet," muttered John Stebbings. "How droll it is she can find out that I can't see so well as I