always in love. Now it is with that Captain Dobble; last week it was
somebody else--and it may be you next week, if--ha! ha! ha!--you are
disposed to enter the lists. I wouldn't, for MY part, have the woman
with twice her money."

What did it matter to me whether the woman was good or not, provided
she was rich? My course was quite clear. I told Dobble all that this
gentleman had informed me, and being a pretty good hand at making a
story, I made the widow appear SO bad, that the poor fellow was quite
frightened, and fairly quitted the field. Ha! ha! I'm dashed if I did
not make him believe that Mrs. Manasseh had MURDERED her last husband.

I played my game so well, thanks to the information that my friend the
lawyer had given me, that in a month I had got the widow to show a most
decided partiality for me. I sat by her at dinner, I drank with her
at the "Wells"--I rode with her, I danced with her, and at a picnic to
Kenilworth, where we drank a good deal of champagne, I actually popped
the question, and was accepted. In another month, Robert Stubbs, Esq.,
led to the altar, Leah, widow of the late Z. Manasseh, Esq., of St.
Kitt's!

*****

We drove up to London in her comfortable chariot: the children and
servants following in a post-chaise. I paid, of course, for everything;
and until our house in Berkeley Square was painted, we stopped at
"Stevens's Hotel."

*****

My own estate had been sold, and the money was lying at a bank in the
City. About three days after our arrival, as we took our breakfast in
the hotel, previous to a visit to Mrs. Stubbs's banker, where certain
little transfers were to be made, a gentleman was introduced, who, I saw
at a glance, was of my wife's persuasion.

He looked at Mrs. Stubbs, and made a bow. "Perhaps it will be convenient
to you to pay this little bill, one hundred and fifty-two pounds?"

"My love," says she, "will you pay this--it is a trifle which I had
really forgotten?"

"My soul!" said I, "I have really not the money in the house."

"Vel, denn, Captain Shtubbsh," says he, "I must do my duty--and arrest
you--here is the writ! Tom, keep the door?" My wife fainted--the
children screamed, and I fancy my condition as I was obliged to march
off to a spunging-house along with a horrid sheriff's officer?

OCTOBER.--MARS AND VENUS IN OPPOSITION.

I shall not describe my feelings when I found myself in a cage in
Cursitor Street, instead of that fine house in Berkeley S