the turf we've played on, the hearts we love, the graves we
venerate--all, all combine to concentrate its charm.

READER.--You are digressing.

Thank you, I am; but I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed
were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience.
The golden dream was soon to end--end even with the yellow dross that gave
it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming
wretchedness--three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an
intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked
generation;"--he bowed to others--galvanism could not have procured the
tithe of a salaam for me. His till was afflicted with a sort of
sinking-fundishness. I was the contractor of "the small bill," whose exact
amount would enable him to meet a "heavy payment;" my very garments were
"tabooed" from all earth's decencies; splashes seemed to have taken a
lease of the bottoms of my trousers. My boots, once objects of the
tenderest care of their unworthy namesake, seemed conscious of the change,
and drooped in untreed wretchedness, desponding at the wretched wrinkles
now ruffling the once smooth calf! My coat no more appeared to catch the
dust; as if under the influence of some invisible charm, its white-washed
elbows never struck upon the sight of the else all-seeing boots; spider
never rushed from his cell with the post-haste speed with which he issued
from his dark recess, to pick the slightest cobweb that ever harnessed
Queen Mab's team, from _other_ coats; a gnat, a wandering hair left its
location, swept by the angry brush from the broad-cloth of those who paid
their bills--as far as I was concerned--all were inoculated with this
strange blindness. It was an overwhelming ophthalmia! The chambermaid,
through its fatality, never discovered that my jugs were empty, my bottle
clothed with slimy green, my soap-dish left untenanted. A day before this
time had been sufficient service for my hand-towel; now a week seemed to
render it less fit to taste the rubs of hands and soap. Dust lost its
vice, and lay unheeded in the crammed corner of my luckless room.

READER.--I feel for you.

Silence! the worst is yet to come. At dinner all things changed--soup,
before too hot to drink, came to my lips cool as if the north wind had
caressed it; number was at an end; I ranked no longer like a human being;
I was a huge _ought_--a walking cypher--a vile round O. I had neit