i)(J The Procrastinator. [JAN- 



et God forbid you should leave them to starve pension them off, 

 that is the best, the only way." 



" Easily said. How could I pension them off, when I find it impos- 

 sible to command ready money to pay even the tradesmen ?" 



tf Pray, when does Mr. Sheffield Shuffleton mean to take his depar- 

 ture ?" 



t( When I can pay him fifteen hundred good English pounds, value 

 received." 



" My dear, Mr. Shuffleton, his servant, and two horses, have been 

 here during the last five months he has made good interest at all 

 events." 



" You women pretend to know every thing. What was I to do ; 

 he came for his money I had it not to give so of course I asked him 

 to remain, which, don't you see, has been a great accommodation to me." 



Mrs. Mount Doyne shook her head. ft You forget the immense addi- 

 tional expenditure it has occasioned he is what you call a regular five 

 bottle man/' 



" Indeed, Caroline, it shocks me to see the note you take of such 

 matters there is something dreadfully mean in observing what people 

 eat and drink/' 



" I would not have my husband mean I would only have him just," 

 she replied, with much firmness. " I would have him calculate his 

 income, and live within it ; I would have him discard an agent whom 

 he knows to be worthless and dishonest " 



" Stop in mercy stop !" exclaimed Mount Doyne, in a tone of sad but 

 earnest entreaty ; " would to Heaven I could do so ! but that man has 

 me within a charmed circle, which seems hourly closing. I am so 

 dreadfully in his power I have suffered him to get hold on my property, 

 bit by bit, in exchange for paltry sums lent from time to time to supply 

 present necessities, and which, after all, were useless. If I had only 

 obtained this situation, I should then have had an excuse for living part 

 of the year, at all events, away from this destroying gulph." 



His gentle wife uttered no reproach no aggravating word escaped her 

 lips. She might have told how frequently, and how earnestly, she had im- 

 plored him to use his influence for that very object and how he had pro- 

 crastinated. She might have said how constantly her energies had been 

 exerted to urge and save the being she so loved, not only from others, but 

 from himself; but though she reproached not, she advised implored 

 entreated, that, cost what it would, he would shake off that one slothful, 

 destroying principle, and stand forth even if poor -independent ; enjoy- 

 ing the glorious privilege which, of all the Almighty's gifts, is the most 

 valuable. Then she pointed to their sleeping child : she appealed to his 

 feelings as a father, whether he could bear the reflection if ever it 

 should come of seeing that dear one want of being the means of 

 bringing a creature into the world, endowed with beauty enriched by 

 a living spirit hallowed by the finest affections the human heart is capa- 

 ble of feeling born as the inheritor of name and fortune and yet 

 despoiled, degraded in the scale of society, by the carelessness of the being 

 appointed by nature as his protector. 



Mount Doyne was touched convinced promised declared and 

 persisted in his old habits. 



Exactly a month after the above conversation occurred, there was 

 deep and bitter mourning in the castle of Mount Doyne. The bloom- 



