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LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

NO. X.--TO CROOKEDNESS.

OBLIQUE, BUT FORMIDABLE ONE,

You have frequently fixed your abode in high places. Are there
not recorded in history the names of kings and statesmen whom an
irresistible desire to scheme, and trick, and overreach, has brought
to the block? The times were difficult--that much one may admit. Noble
heads of honourable and upright men were lopped in profusion; and it
may be argued, with some show of reason, that the man whose character
was as flawless as pure crystal, was like to fare as badly as the
muddiest rascal of them all, if his side sank in defeat. And yet
I cannot help believing that, in some cases at least, a man might
have had a happier end if he had abstained from acts of political
turpitude, which were as irrational in their conception as they
were ruinous in their effect; acts, that is, which, in the existing
circumstances, no sane man could have undertaken unless the mere doing
of these rogueries had been a supreme and a necessary pleasure to him.
There was poor CHARLES THE FIRST. Surely, in spite of that melancholy,
doomed face, he might have died in peace if he had only played the
game fairly. JAMES THE SECOND, too, and MARLBOROUGH, the greatest
Captain of his age, and BOLINGBROKE, the eloquent philosophiser, the
grave moralist, how different might their ends have been had not you,
O CROOKEDNESS, presided at their births, and ruled their lives. But,
avaunt, History! Here I am straying into a treatise, when I merely
intended to remind you of little PETER SHEEF, and of his adventures.

[Illustration]

PETER and I were freshmen together at Cambridge in the remote past
before "Johnnies," and "Chappies," and "Mashers" had been heard of,
before the "oof bird" had been fledged in its pink and sporting nest,
or the Egyptian cigarette had asserted its universal sway. I daresay
we differed but little (by "we" I mean the freshmen of our year) from
those who have lately appeared for the first time in King's Parade, or
Jesus Lane. We were very young--we imagined Proctors to be destitute
of human feeling; we ate portentous breakfasts of many courses, and,
for the most part, treated our allowances as though they had been so
much pocket-money. Also we had an idea that a man who had passed his
thirtieth year was absurdly old, and that nobody could be called a
boy whose name had been entered on the books of a College. In fact,
we were fr