all a
'fleeting show,' and bubbles are a 'fleeting show;' or because the
Scriptures tell us that everything here is emptiness and vanity--and
bubbles are emptiness and vanity; I have the whole of your argument, I
believe?--is hardly worthy of a man, who, in writing, would wish to make
his fellow-man better or wiser--"

"Well done the bubble!--I never heard _you_ reason before: keep it up, my
dear."

"You never gave me a chance; and, by the way, there is one bubble you have
entirely overlooked."

"And what is that--marriage?"

"No."

"The buried treasures, and the cross of pure gold, a foot and a half long,
you were talking with that worthy man about, last winter, when I came upon
you by surprise, and found you both sitting together in the dark--and
whispering _so_ mysteriously?"

"Captain Watts, you mean, the lighthouse keeper?"

"Yes. Upon my word, Peter, I began to think you were _up_ for California. I
never knew you so absent in all your life as you were, day after day, for a
long while after that conversation."

"The very thing, my dear!--and as I happen to know most of the parties, and
was in communication for three whole years with the leader of the
enterprise, I do think it would be one of the very best illustrations to be
found, in our day, of that strange, steadfast, unquenchable faith, which
upholds the bubble-hunter through all the sorrows and all the
discouragements of life, happen what may: and you shall have the credit of
suggesting that story. But then, look you, my dear--if I content myself
with telling the simple truth, nobody will believe me."

"Try it."

"I will!--Good night, my dear."

"Don't make a long story of it, I beseech you.--Good night!"

"Hadn't you better leave the little cap with me? It may keep you awake, my
dear."

"Nonsense. Good night!" and papa drops into a chair, makes a pen, and goes
to work as follows:--

Now for it: here goes! In the year 1841, there was a man living at
Portland, Maine, whose life, were it faithfully written out, would be one
of the most amusing, perhaps one of the most instructive, books of our day.
Energetic, hopeful, credulous to a proverb, and yet sagacious enough to
astonish everybody when he prospered, and to set everybody laughing at him
when he did not, he had gone into all sorts of speculation, head over
heels, in the course of a few years, and failed in everything he undertook.
At one time, he was a retail dry-goods dealer, and failed: