sed with an
effort, Shelley once made him a present of fourteen hundred pounds,
to extricate him from debt. I was not extricated, for I had not yet
learned to be careful; but the shame of not being so, after such
generosity, and the pain which my friend afterward underwent when
I was in trouble and he was helpless, were the first causes of my
thinking of money matters to any purpose. His last sixpence was ever
at my service, had I chosen to share it. In a poetical epistle
written some years after, and published in the volume of "Posthumous
Poems," Shelley, in alluding to his friend's circumstances, which
for the second time were then straitened, only made an affectionate
lamentation that he himself was poor; never once hinting that he had
himself drained his purse for his friend.

* * * * *

MRS. JORDAN.--Mrs. Jordan was inimitable in exemplifying the
consequences of too much restraint in ill-educated country girls, in
romps, in hoydens, and in wards on whom the mercenary have designs.
She wore a bib and tucker, and pinafore, with a bouncing propriety,
fit to make the boldest spectator alarmed at the idea of bringing
such a household responsibility on his shoulders. To see her when
thus attired, shed blubbering tears for some disappointment, and eat
all the while a great thick slice of bread and butter, weeping, and
moaning, and munching, and eyeing at very bite the part she meant
to bite next, was a lesson against will and appetite worth a hundred
sermons, and no one could produce such an impression in favor of
amiableness as she did, when she acted in gentle, generous, and
confiding character. The way in which she would take a friend by
the cheek and kiss her, or make up a quarrel with a lover, or coax a
guardian into good humor, or sing (without accompaniment) the song
of, "Since then I'm doom'd," or "In the dead of the night," trusting,
as she had a right to do, and as the house wished her to do, to the
sole effect of her sweet, mellow, and loving voice--the reader will
pardon me, but tears of pleasure and regret come into my eyes at
the recollection, as if she personified whatsoever was happy at that
period of life, and which has gone like herself. The very sound of the
familiar word 'bud' from her lips (the abbreviation of husband,) as
she packed it closer, as it were, in the utterance, and pouted it up
with fondness in the man's face, taking him at the same time by the
chin, was