lk forth into the street? He was aware now, though he had never so
thought of himself before, that in the short days of his prosperity
he had taken much upon himself, as the member of a prosperous firm.
It had never then occurred to him that he had given himself airs
because he was Robinson, of the house in Bishopsgate Street; but
now he bethought himself that he had perhaps done so. How would men
treat him when he should no longer be the same Robinson? How had he
condescended to Poppins! how had he domineered at the "Goose and
Gridiron!" how had he patronized those who served him in the shop!
Men remember these things of themselves quite as quickly as others
remember them. Robinson thought of all this now, and almost wished
that those visits to Blackfriars Bridge had not been in vain.

But nevertheless it behoved him to work. He had promised that he
would use his own peculiar skill for the benefit of the creditors,
and therefore, shaking himself as it were out of his despondency, he
buckled himself to his desk. "It is a grand opportunity," he said, as
he thought of the task before him, "but my work will be no longer for
myself and partners.

The lofty rhyme I still must make,
Though other hands shall touch the money.
So do the bees for others' sake
Fill their waxen combs with honey."

Then, when he had thus solaced himself with verse, he sat down to his
work.

There was a mine of wealth before him from which to choose. A
tradesman in preparing the ordinary advertisements of his business is
obliged to remember the morrow. He must not risk everything on one
cast of the die. He must be in some degree modest and circumspect,
lest he shut himself out from all possibility of rising to a higher
note on any future opportunity. But in preparing for a final
sacrifice the artist may give the reins to his imagination, and
plunge at once into all the luxuries of the superlative. But to this
pleasure there was one drawback. The thing had been done so often
that superlatives had lost their value, and it had come to pass that
the strongest language sounded impotently in the palled ears of the
public. What idea can, in its own nature, be more harrowing to the
soul than that of a TREMENDOUS SACRIFICE? but what effect would arise
now-a-days from advertising a sale under such a heading? Every little
milliner about Tottenham Court Road has her "Tremendous Sacrifice!"
when she desires to rid her shelves of ends of