Right, reader, right; we were a puppy. Lash on, we richly deserve it! but, consider the fearful influence of worn-out cloth! Can a long series of unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade "like the baseless fabric of a vision" before the withering touch of poverty's stern stamp? Have you ever felt--
"Eh? what? No--stuff! Yes, yes--go on, go on."
We will!--we blushed for our uncle's coat! His heart, God bless it, never caused a blush on the cheek of man, woman, child, or even angel, to rise for that. We will confess. Let's see, we are sixty now (we don't look so much, but we are sixty). Well, be it so. We were handsome once--is this vanity at sixty? if so, our grey hairs are a hatchment for the past. We were "swells once!--hurrah!--we were!" Stop, this is indecent--let us be calm--our action was like the proceeding of the denuder of well-sustained and thriving pigs, he who deprives them of their extreme obesive selvage--_vulgo_, "_we cut it fat_." Bond-street was cherished by our smile, and Ranelagh was rendered happy by the exhibition of our symmetry. Behold us hessianed in our haunts, touching the tips of well-gloved fingers to our passing friends; then fancy the opening and shutting of our back, just as Lord Adolphus Nutmeg claimed the affinity of "kid to kid," to find our other hand close prisoner made by our uncle Bucket.
"A lunatic, my lord (what lies men tell!), and dangerous!"
"Good day! [_Exit my lord_]. This way." We followed our uncle--the end of a blind alley gave us a resting-place.
"Bravo!" exclaimed our uncle Bucket, "this is rare! I live here--dine with me!"
A mob surrounded us--we acquiesced, in hopes to reach a place of shelter.
"All right!" exclaimed he of the maternal side, "stand three-halfpence for your feed."
We shelled the necessary out--he dived into a baker's shop--the mob increased--he hailed us from the door.
A dish of steaming baked potatoes, surmounted by a fractional rib of consumptive beef, was deposited between the lemon-coloured receptacles of our thumbs and fingers--an outcry was raised at the court's end--we were almost mad.