ove" he soon descended to those "below;" he became dissipated
and dissolute, his hireling pen scrupled at nothing, and he assailed
anything or any one, to order. Magistrates "had him up" as the author
of threatening letters or begging epistles. To-day he was the mock
secretary of an imaginary charity; tomorrow he 'd appear as a distressed
missionary going out to some island in the Pacific. He was eternally
before the world, until the paragraph that spoke of him grew to be
headed by the words, "The Reverend Paul Classon again!" or, more
briefly, "Paul Classon's last!" His pen, all this while, was his sole
subsistence; and what a bold sweep it took!--impeachment of Ministers,
accusation of theft, forgery, intimation of even worse crimes against
the highest names in the realm, startling announcements of statesmen
bribed, ambassadors corrupted, pasquinades against bishops and judges,
libellous stories of people in private life, prize fights, prophetic
almanacs, mock missionary journals, stanzas to celebrate quack
remedies,--even street ballads were amongst his literary efforts; while,
personally, he presided at low singing-establishments, and was the
president of innumerable societies in localities only known to the
police. It was difficult to take up a newspaper without finding him
either reported drunk and disorderly in the police-sheet, obstructing
the thoroughfare by a crowd assembled to hear him, having refused to pay
for his dinner or his bed, assaulted the landlady, or, crime of crimes,
used intemperate language to "G 493." At last they got actually tired
of trying him for begging, and imprisoning him for battery; the law was
wearied out; but the world also had its patience exhausted, and Paul saw
that he must conquer a new hemisphere. He came abroad.

What a changeful life was it now that he led,--at one time a tutor, at
another a commissionaire for an hotel, a railway porter, a travelling
servant, a police spy, the doorkeeper of a circus company, editor of
an English journal, veterinary, language master, agent for patent
medicines, picture-dealer, and companion to a nervous invalid, which,
as Paul said, meant a furious maniac. There is no telling what he went
through of debt and difficulty, till the police actually preferred
passing him quietly over the frontier to following up with penalty so
incurable an offender. In this way had he wandered about Europe for
years, the terror of legations, the pestilence of charit