e existence,--in that semi-nude sociality, begun on the
sands and carried out into deep water, which I cannot abide. I abhor,
besides, a lounging population in fancy toilets, a procession of donkeys
in scarlet trappings, elderly gentlemen with pocket-telescopes, and
fierce old ladies with camp-stools. The worn-out debauchees come to
recruit for another season of turtle and whitebait; the half-faded
victims of twenty polkas per night, the tiresome politician, pale from
a long session, all fiercely bent on fresh diet and sea-breezes, are
perfect antipathies to me, and I would rather seek companionship in a
Tyrol village than amidst these wounded and missing of a London
season. With all this I wanted to get away from the vicinity of the
Jopplyns,--they were positively odious to me. Is not the man who holds
in his keeping one scrap of your handwriting which displays you in
a light of absurdity, far more your enemy than the holder of your
protested bill? I own I think so. Debt is a very human weakness; like
disease, it attacks the best and the noblest amongst us. You' may pity
the fellow that cannot meet that acceptance, you may be sorry for the
anxiety it occasions him, the fruitless running here and there, the
protestations, promises, and even lies he goes through, but no sense of
ludicrous scorn mingles with your compassion, none of that contemptuous
laughter with which you read a copy of absurd verses or a maudlin
love-letter.

Imagine the difference of tone in him who says: "That's an old bill of
poor Potto's; he 'll never pay it now, and I 'm sure I 'll never ask
him." Or, "Just read those lines; would you believe that any creature
out of Ham well could descend to such miserable drivel as that? It was
one Potts who wrote it."

I wonder, could I obtain my manuscript from Jopplyn before I started.
What pretext could I adduce for the request? While I thus pondered, I
packed up my few wearables in my knapsack and prepared for the road.
They were, indeed, a very scanty supply, and painfully suggested to
my mind the estimate that waiters and hotel-porters must form of their
owner. "Cruel world," muttered I, "whose maxim is, 'By their outsides
shall ye judge them.' Had I arrived here with a travelling-carriage and
a 'fourgon,' what respect and deference had awaited me,--how courteous
the landlord, how obliging the head-waiter! Twenty attentions which
could not be charged for in the bill had been shown me; and even had
I, in