Seated side by side in a room of the inn, old Layton and his son remained till nigh daybreak. How much had they to ask and answer of each other! Amidst the flood of questions poured forth, anything like narrative made but sorry progress; but at length Alfred came to hear how his father had been duped by a pretended friend, cheated out of his discovery, robbed of his hard-won success, and then denounced as an impostor.
“This made me violent, and then they called me mad. A little more of such persecution and their words might have come true.
“I scarcely yet know to what I am indebted for my liberation. I was a patient in Swift's Hospital, when one day came the Viceroy to visit it, and with him came a man I had met before in society, but not over amicably, nor with such memories as could gratify. 'Who is this?' cried he, as he saw me at work in the garden. 'I think I remember his face.' The keeper whispered something, and he replied, 'Ah! indeed!' while he drew near where I was digging. 'What do you grow here?' asked he of me, in a half-careless tone. 'Madder,' shouted I, with a yell that made him start; and then, recovering himself, he hastened off to report the answer to the Viceroy.
“They both came soon after to where I was. The Viceroy, with that incaution which makes some people talk before the insane as though they were deaf, said, in my hearing, 'And so you tell me he was once a Fellow of Trinity?' 'Yes, my Lord,' said I, assuming the reply, 'a Regius Professor and a Medallist, now a Madman and a Pauper. The converse is the gentleman at your side. He began as a fool, and has ended as a Poor Law Commissioner!' They both turned away, but I cried out, 'Mr. Ogden, one word with you before you go.' He came back. 'I have been placed here,' said I, 'at the instance of a man who has robbed me. I am not mad, but I am friendless. The name of my persecutor is Holmes. He writes himself Captain Nicholas Holmes—'
“He would not hear another word, but hurried away without answering me. I know no more than that I was released ten days after,—that I was turned out in the streets to starve or rob. My first thought was to find out this man Holmes. To meet and charge him with his conduct towards me, in some public place, would have been a high vengeance; but I sought him for weeks in vain, and at last learned he had gone abroad.
“How I lived all that time I cannot tell you; it is all to me now like a long and terrible dream. I was constantly in the hands of the police, and rarely a day passed that I had not some angry altercation with the authorities. I was in one of these one morning, when, half stupefied with cold and want, I refused to answer further. The magistrate asked, 'Has he any friends? Is there no one who takes any interest in him?' The constable answered, 'None, your worship; and it is all the better, he would only heap disgrace on them!'
“It was then, for the first moment of my life, the full measure of all I had become stood plainly before me. In those few words lay the sentence passed upon my character. From that hour forth I determined never to utter my name again. I kept this pledge faithfully, nor was it difficult; few questioned, none cared for me. I lived—if that be the word for it—in various ways. I compounded drugs for chemists, corrected the press for printers, hawked tracts, made auction catalogues, and at last turned pyrotechnist to a kind of Vauxhall, all the while writing letters home with small remittances to your mother, who had died when I was in the madhouse. In a brief interval of leisure I went down to the North, to learn what I might of her last moments, and to see where they had laid her. There was a clergyman there who had been kind and hospitable towards me in better days, and it was to his house I repaired.”
He paused, and for some minutes was silent. At length he said,—
“It is strange, but there are certain passages in my life, not very remarkable in themselves, that remain distinct and marked out, just as one sees certain portions of landscape by the glare of lightning flashes in a thunderstorm, and never forgets them after. Such was my meeting with this Mr. Millar. He was distributing bread to the poor, with the assistance of his clerk, on the morning that I came to his door. The act, charitable and good in itself, he endeavored to render more profitable by some timely words of caution and advice; he counselled gratitude towards those who bestowed these bounties, and thrift in their use. Like all men who have never known want themselves, he denied that it ever came save through improvidence. He seemed to like the theme, and dwelt on it with pleasure, the more as the poor sycophants who received his alms eagerly echoed back concurrence in all that he spoke disparagingly of themselves. I waited eagerly till he came to a pause, and then I spoke.
“'Now,' said I, 'let us reverse this medal, and read it on the other side. Though as poor and wretched as any of those about, I have not partaken of your bounty, and I have the right to tell you that your words are untrue, your teaching unsound, and your theory a falsehood. To men like us, houseless, homeless, and friendless, you may as well preach good breeding and decorous manners, as talk of providence and thrift. Want is a disease; it attacks the poor, whose constitutions are exposed to it; and to lecture us against its inroads is like cautioning us against cold, by saying “Take care to wear strong boots,—mind that you take your greatcoat,—be sure that you do not expose yourself to the night air.” You would be shocked, would you not, to address such sarcastic counsels to such poor, barefoot, ragged creatures as we are? And yet you are not shocked by enjoining things fifty times more absurd, five hundred times more difficult. Thrift is the inhabitant of warm homesteads, where the abundant meal is spread upon the board and the fire blazes on the hearth. It never lives in the hovel, where the snowdrift lodges in the chimney and the rain beats upon the bed of straw!'