RANGE OF APPRENTICESHIP. 75 



do we hear lively narration of youthful connexion and adventure 

 — the true coloring; of condition, so "miserably poor," that the 

 eye, which sparkles at the tongue's loquacity, would break friend- 

 ship could it again behold what it once cheerfully tolerated; 

 and the heart, that knew no other asylum for its healthful pulsa- 

 tion, break at the picture. To forget is impossible; to feign for- 

 getfulness is absurd ; while to despise the humble walk which 

 either necessity or circumstance once rendered familiar to our 

 feet, is cruel. 



So poorli/ excellent is the best of us, and so limited is the dura- 

 bility of such excellence, that when we witness disdain, manifested 

 either towards the persons or homes of the humbly intellectual or 

 honestly laborious, we are strongly called upon to exercise our 

 pit^, and wish a thousand years might be the portion of the con- 

 temptuous heart — for a less period would be insufficient to soften 

 it into the flexibility of useful charity. Indeed, a thousand years 

 would be insufficient, if our contempt rest upon objects that 

 either nature or gratitude should call upon us to remember or 

 love, since they were the spring of our well-being, if not, directly, 

 of our greater consequence. How, then, must the muscle of ra- 

 tional philosophy extend, in reproving risibility, when it is known 

 that not to one in one hundred of these creeping things of pity 

 is allowed the tenth part of so long a period, and, with active 

 mental *' ways and means," scarcely the twentieth part ! Then^ 

 scenes of by-gone days, come freely, if virtuously, to my recol- 

 lection, and form a little of the hackneyed " subject matter" which 

 fills the trifling blank of my leisure ; and first, let it be of an hearty 

 old dame, prolific in promises, but verily the cause of no other 

 misgiving than that of disappointment ; and, by way of distinction, 

 she shall figure as the 



LADY OF THE LANE. 



Mrs. Provolvus kept a well-frequented little shop, and the 

 peaceful returns of a long life, during almost so long a national 

 war, must have given her more trouble to count than to use. 

 Her establisliraent might be considered one of two, which char- 

 acterized golden dai/s: — the first, that of the " Old English Gen- 

 tleman,'* the second, that of the " Good Liver ;^* and although 

 some may think these comfortable terms blended, yet, a distinction 

 can be discovered with a diflerence, but without any enviable 

 odds. The latter was decidedly hers. 



The old lady was ;it all times Mistress — and I have been told 

 that in pHilv flriv -^Ik- ^va^ Master and Mislrcss too— of her own 



