t can I _do_ for you, sir?" says he.

"A good deal," says Dobbs, "but I bet you won't."

"I'll bet I will," says the knight of the yard-stick, "if I _can_."

"What'll you bet of that?" says the imperturbable Dobbs.

"I'll bet a fourpence!" says the clerk, with a cute _nod_.

"I'll go it," says Dobbs. "Now, trust me for a couple of dollars' wuth
of yur stuffs!"

"_Lost_, by Ned!" says yard-stick. "Well, there's the fourpence."

"Thank you; call again when I want to _trade!_" says Dobbs.

"Do, if you please; wouldn't like to lose your custom," says the clerk,
"no how."

Polite young man that--as soon as his chin vegetates, provided his
dickey don't cut his throat, he'll be arter the gals, Dobbs thinks!

Used Up.

I am tempted to believe, that few--very few men can start in the
world--say at twenty, with a replete invoice of honesty, free and
easy--kind, generous--good-natured disposition, and keep it up, until
they greet their fortieth year. There are, doubtless, plenty of men--I
hope there are, who _would_ be entirely and perfectly generous-hearted,
if they _could_, with any degree of consistency; and I know there are
multitudes who wouldn't exhibit an honorable or manly trait, of any
human description, if they could. That class thrive best, it appears to
me--if the accumulation of dollars and dimes be Webster, Walker, or
Scriptural interpretation of that sense--in this sublunary world.
Meanness and dishonesty win what good nature and honesty lose, hence the
more thrift to the former, and the less gain, pecuniarily considered, to
the latter. The subject is very prolific, and as my present purpose is
as much to point a humorous _sketch_ as to adorn a _moral_, I needs must
cut speculative philosophistics for facts, in the case of my friend John
Jenks, an emphatic--"used up" good fellow.

Jenks started in this world with a first-rate opinion of himself and the
rest of mankind. No man ever started with a larger capital of good
nature, human benevolence, and common honesty, than honest John. Few men
ever started with better general prospects, for "a good time," and
plenty of it, than Jenks. He _graduated_ with honor to himself and the
Institute of his native State, and with but little knowledge beyond the
college library and the social circles of his immediate friends. At
twenty-three, John Jenks went into business on his own hook.

Of course John soon formed various and many business acquaintances; he