enlisting the service of that
Great Company which extended its wings from Bombay to Bengal, as
Sheridan said, impudently enough, like the vulture covering his prey; or
in taking the chance of fortune, in the shape of cabin-boy on board one
of the thousand ships that were daily floating down the Thames, making
their way to the extremities of the earth; or in finishing my feverish
speculations in a cold bath at the bottom of the Thames itself; I did
what I felt a severer exertion than any of them--I wrote a full and true
statement of my vexations to my lordly brother.

His answer was lordly enough. He had been "so much occupied with the
numberless duties devolving upon him as landlord, magistrate,
lord-lieutenant, and fifty other things, that he absolutely had not been
able to find a moment to think of me;" and what was rather more
perplexing to my immediate sensibilities, "he had not been able to send
me a shilling. However, he did all that he could, and gave me a note to
a particular friend," Mr Elisha Mordecai of Moorfields.

There is nothing which quickens a man's movements like a depletion of
the purse; and instead of lounging at my hotel until the morning paper
brought me the scandals and pleasantries of the day before fresh for my
breakfast-table, I threw myself out of bed at an hour which I should not
have ventured to mention to any man with whom I walked arm-in-arm during
the day, and made my way in a hackney coach, to avoid the possibility of
being recognised, to the dwelling of my new patron, or rather my guide
and guardian angel.

I make no attempt to describe the navigation through which I reached
him; it was winding, dark, and dirty beyond all description, and gave
the idea of the passages of a dungeon rather than any thing else that I
could name. And in a hovel worthy to finish such a voyage of discovery,
I discovered Mr Elisha Mordecai, the man of untold opulence. For a
while, on being ushered into the office, where he sat pen in hand, I was
utterly unable to ascertain any thing of him beyond a gaunt thin figure,
who sat crouching behind a pile of papers, and beneath a small window
covered with the dirt of ages. He gave me the impression in his dungeon
of one of those toads which are found from time to time in blocks of
coal, and have lain there unbreathing and unmoving since the deluge.
However, he was a man of business, and so was I for the moment. I handed
him my brother's note; and like a ray of sun