THE MAN OF TWO LIVES. 333 



that she would willingly have died before him in order to get the 

 grave thoroughly aired for his reception. 



" What more felicity can fall to creature?'' Here was little Sa- 

 muel Singe, with a daily increasing business, with a prudent and 

 strenuous wife, with a father-in-law whom he loved (he was reputed 

 wealthy), and whose gray hairs he respected ever, and cut every six 

 weeks. 



I have painted a picture of unvaried brightness of tint, of Claude- 

 like serenity, of cloudless sunshine; but now (alas! that it must be, 

 but rigorous truth will have it so), I must give colours of a sombre 

 hue, and lay them on pretty thickly. I must dip, as a great modern 

 poet says, 



" My pencil in the gloom of thunder and eclipse.'' 



Who can lay his account with meeting no reverses in life ? Who can 

 expect to trudge onwards in a long lane of luck without a turning? 

 Who can snap his fingers at fate and cry, " That for you ? " Even 

 Samuel Singe was assailable. 



The first practicable example presented to the barber of the insta- 

 bility of worldly expectations, and of the reed-like brittleness of hope, 

 was afforded him upon a melancholy occasion. His father-in-law, 

 Diogenes Thproughgood, suddenly gave up wheel-making, cask- 

 coopering, and the ghost. Think not that Samuel Singe was deficient 

 in a proper resignation. He bore the calamity with fortitude, but 

 there was a certain upshot that wounded his feelings deeply. To 

 hint the matter strongly, Thoroughgood, although a wheelwright for 

 very many years, had, it seemed, very little to do with the repair 

 of the wheel of fortune ; and I fear (not to speak scandalously) had in 

 his day emptied almost as many casks as he had manufactured. In- 

 deed, the deceased mechanic had unconsciously obtained credit for 

 wealth amongst his neighbours which, to do him justice, he had never 

 concurred to encourage (such opinion being founded, as it commonly 

 is, upon a red nose, a ragged coat, and a bluff straightforwardness 

 of speech), so that when he died, instead of coming " down with his 

 dust,'' as Samuel naturally expected he would have done, the per- 

 plexed barber was himself compelled to do that office for him to the 

 tune of a huge stout elm coffin, a hearse and four, mourning coach, 

 two mutes, and a family vault. 



This was awkward nay, it was distressing ; but Singe was not the 

 man to be disheartened by such casualties. While there were beards 

 to grow and to mow he felt assured of maintaining his secular posi- 

 tion, and, except a few muttered complaints to his wife, in his more 

 excited moments, of the improvidence and duplicity of the old and 

 sinful insolvent, he let the matter drop entirely. But other engines 

 were at work of an undermining tendency. Some of the Athenian 

 citizens, amongst whom was, I think, Themistocles himself, were impa- 

 tient at hearing Aristides so often termed " the just." The inhabit- 

 ants of Gravelstone were, in like manner, intolerant of the fame of 

 Singe. Some envied his colloquial qualities, many his extent of bu- 

 siness ; the former of these insinuated doubts at first, but soon openly 

 breathed denials of his conversational supremacy ; the latter, by some 

 illogical process of reasoning, laid their own moderate success or ill- 



