le hypocrites, and cannot escape without crawling in the
dust--this produces a large deep gloom, and a crushing sense of doom
beyond philosophy. Scudamore could have endured the loss and the
disillusion of his love--pure and strong as that power had been--but
the ruin of his native land would turn his lively heart into a lump of
stone.

For two or three days he roved about among the people of the
water-side--boatmen, pilots, shipping agents, store-keepers, stevedores,
crimps, or any others likely to know anything to help him. Some of these
could speak a little English, and many had some knowledge of French; but
all shook their heads at his eagerness to get to England. "You may
wait weeks, or you may wait months," said the one who knew most of
the subject; "we are very jealous of the English ships. That country
swallows up the sea so. It has been forbidden to supply the English
ships; but for plenty money it is done sometimes; but the finger must
be placed upon the nose, and upon the two eyes what you call the guinea;
and in six hours where are they? Swallowed up by the mist from the
mountain. No, sir! If you have the great money, it is very difficult.
But if you have not that, it is impossible."

"I have not the great money; and the little money also has escaped from
a quicksand in the bottom of my pocket."

"Then you will never get to England, sir," this gentleman answered,
pleasantly; "and unless I have been told things too severely, the best
man that lives had better not go there, without a rock of gold in his
pocket grand enough to fill a thousand quicksands."

Scudamore lifted the relics of his hat, and went in search of some other
Job's comforter. Instead of a passage to England, he saw in a straight
line before him the only journey which a mortal may take without paying
his fare.

To save himself from this gratuitous tour, he earned a little money in
a porter's gang, till his quick step roused the indignation of the rest.
With the loftiest perception of the rights of man, they turned him
out of that employment (for the one "sacred principle of labour" is to
play), and he, understanding now the nature, of democracy, perceived
that of all the many short-cuts to starvation, the one with the fewest
elbows to it is--to work.

While he was meditating upon these points--which persons of big words
love to call "questions of political economy"--his hat, now become a
patent ventilator, sat according to custom on the