expound how the discerning few--those who have the
wit and the will (both must concur to the great end) may live--LIVE--not
like him who buys and balances himself by the book of the groveller who
wrote "How to _Live_ upon Fifty Pounds a Year"--(O shame to manhood!)--but
live, I say--"be free and merry"--"laugh and grow fat"--exchange the
courtesies of life--be a pattern of the "minor morals"--and yet: all this
without a doit in bank, bureau, or breeches' pocket.

I am that sage. Let none deride. Haply, I shall only remind some, but I may
teach many. Those that come to scoff, may perchance go home to prey.

Let no gentleman of the old school (for whom, indeed, my brief treatise is
not designed) be startled when I advance this proposition: That more
discreditable methods are daily practised by those who live to get money,
than are resorted to by those who without money are nevertheless under the
necessity of living. If this proposition be assented to--as, in truth, I
know not how it can be gainsaid,--nothing need be urged in vindication of
my art of _free_ living. Proceed I then at once.

Here is a youth of promise--born, like Jaffier, with "elegant desires"--one
who does not agnize a prompt alacrity in carrying burdens--one, rather, who
recognizes a moral and physical unfitness for such, and indeed all other
dorsal and manual operations--one who has been born a Briton, and would
not, therefore, sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; but, on the
contrary, holds that his birthright entitles him to as many messes of
pottage as there may be days to his mortal span, though time's fingers
stretched beyond the distance allotted to extreme Parr or extremest
Jenkins. "Elegant desires" are gratified to the extent I purpose treating
of them, by handsome clothes--comfortable lodgings--good dinners.

1st. _Of Handsome Clothes._--Here, I confess, I find myself in some
difficulty. The man who knows not how to have his name entered in the
day-book of a tailor, is not one who could derive any benefit from
instruction of mine. He must be a born natural. Why, it comes by instinct.

2nd. _Of Comfortable Lodgings._--Easily obtained and secured. The easiest
thing in life. But the wit without money must possess very little more of
the former than of the latter, if he do not, even when snugly ensconced in
one splendid suite of apartments, have his eye upon many others; for
landladies are sometimes vexatiously impertinent, and novelty is d