I have previously told my readers that Jonathan could not read or write: his wonderful memory enabled him to dispense with those requirements; but he could not forget, neither does he forget now, so his treasures have acquired an added value. No fabled cave ever contained the riches that his poor home contains. Day by day they increase in value, and he lives in the certain hope that some portion may be sold, that the "parish" may be repaid for the cost he imposed on it, and that some friendly hand will knock at the door of the asylum, and some friendly voice will cry, "Open, sesame," that he may come forth a free man to join the residue of his quaint collection. And it is well, poor old Jonathan! that thou shouldst live in this belief, and that thou shouldst hug those delusions, for in thy case a false hope is better far than a knowledge of the truth. Live on, then, quaint old man, long or short as the days may be--live on in the world of thy own creating.
But to my friends who may read this sketch of real life, the plain, unvarnished truth is due. Jonathan's accumulation of treasures passed into the fiery furnace of the local dust-destructor, and from thence leapt into thin air or emerged as "clinkers." It sorely puzzled the "parish," which had disposed of Jonathan, how to dispose of Jonathan's effects, but it promptly annexed the vermilion chairs. The parish labourers, not behind time, promptly annexed the tobacco, and the "crosses," that were to lie "one on my breast inside the coffin and one on the lid," disappeared, to be devoted, doubtless, to a less honourable cause.
But the hairpins that had nestled in the hair of many fair ladies no one would look at; no scrap merchant would buy them; so into the fiery furnace of the dust-destructor they went. Hatpins--instruments of torture, weapons of offence or defence, that had added many a danger to life--followed the hairpins. Babies' comforters--the fiery furnace roared for them, and licked its hot lips as it sucked them in. Think of it, mothers, who mock your children with such civilized productions! "Tops and bottoms," hoary scalps of fifty years ago, "granulated tops and bottoms," that drove "Sunny Jim" to despair, had scant consideration. In they went, and the flames leapt higher and higher as box after box of Jonathan's treasure fed them, till, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," they dissolved, and "left not a wrack behind."