A HORRIBLE PASSAGE IN MY EARLY LIFE.
"Make the most of your school-days, my lad; they'll be the happiest of your life!"
So said a kind friend, who called on me once when I was in that state called pupillaris. He gave me the advice, and I grinned approval; he did not give me a "tip," and I considered him a mean and despicable wretch, and his advice not worth listening to. Still did the words oft recur to me; and with especial force did they recur on the subsequent Saturday, when I was preparing to "avail myself of a kind invitation" to dine and sleep out, and was packing carefully up, in a crumpled piece of Bell's Life, (which, in the capacity of fag, I had appropriated as a perquisite from my master's store,) such necessaries as such a sojourn demanded. And the result was, that as my nose inhaled the undeniable evidence of the approach of dinner below, and I felt the pleasing conviction to an empty stomach, that, until seven, at least, I should not hear the apoplectic butler assert, in voice abdominal, that dinner was on the table, I gave a long sniff, and sighed, "Well! perhaps they are!"
I had got at last clear of the city. My pocket was devoid of coin—of the lowest even, else should I have called a cab, (for in those days neither Shillibeer nor G. Ck. had started a "bus.") As it was, I walked, and was just entering Piccadilly from the Circus, when a laugh in my rear made me turn rapidly, and my eyes encountered—a tall butcher's boy! He was habited in a grey frieze coat, corduroy smalls, and blue apron. His hair was well plastered down. He had no cap; but he had a pair of "aggravators" trained on either temple. His eyes were large; his cheeks beefy; and withal, he carried on his shoulder a tray, and it carried—ugh!—--a large piece of liver! That I saw then. An indescribable awe spread through my frame—my feelings were what the wretch behind me would have called "offal." I knew, as though by instinct, that I had in Piccadilly seen, what Napoleon saw at Acre—the man who should mar my destiny!
Abstractedly, there is nothing absolutely and inherently vicious in a butcher's boy; on the contrary, he may be decidedly virtuous—nay, we have in our mind's eye cases which would go far to prove that high moral integrity and humanity of sentiment are quite compatible with his most necessary trade. Is it then asked, why this individual should excite at once in my boyish bosom such lively feelings of horror—such forebodings of evil? I can give no more reason for it than did my friend Grant, (who tells such jolly stories,) for declining to show his box of silk-worms to an inquiring friend. "Grant! just let's have a look at your silk-worms—there's a good fellow!"—"No!"—"Why not, man?"—"Because not!" My answer must be similar in spirit, if not in letter. I knew that the odious individual was destined to be my evil genius for the day.
But to my tale. The owner of the large optics—the bearer of "the tray," returned my gaze. Its result as to any favourable impression of my personal appearance on his mind seemed doubtful. He merely remarked, however, "Vell, you are a nice swell for a small party, you are!"
I walked on. The observation set me contemplating my admirable blue jacket, with its neat row of buttons; my exceedingly pleasing waistcoat, and pantaloons of black; my large white collar, and unexceptionable shirt-front; not to mention the Oxford shoes, and the beaver hat, which, on a pretence of excessive heat, and after the manner of elderly gentlemen in Kensington Gardens, I took off, that my eyes might be satisfied that it was all right. The result of the scrutiny was a feeling that the remark of the wretch (who might or might not be following—look round again I dared not) was not only quite natural, but, taking the word "swell" in its better acceptation, quite consistent with the truth. On, therefore, I walked, and by the time I reached Sackville Street, became tranquil again. Now, to all London peripatetics the print-shop at the corner of that street must be well known. It was at this identical place that I made a halt, and a determination at the same time to have a regular jolly good look at all the pictures (for by St. James's it was now only two o'clock); beginning, in the orthodox way, with the last bar of the "airy" up Sackville Street, and "the Norwich mail in a thunderstorm;" and gradually proceeding to the last bar up Piccadilly, and an earnest scrutiny of some stout gentleman in spectacles, who always will stand at the end of a print-shop window, to prevent one's satisfactorily finishing everything.
"How uncertain are all sublunary things!"—"All that's bright must fade," &c., are remarks which one occasionally meets with in the works of English authors, and is very apt to treat with contempt. Yet who can predicate at two o'clock that he shall be happy at a quarter past? I had, in the prosecution of my plan, got half-way down the railings in Sackville Street, and had arrived opposite a peculiar pane of glass, wherein, as in a mirror, my own happy face, and the especial whiteness of my shirt-collar, were revealed to my gratified vision. I had just given the last-named a gentle pull up, and was smiling in the consciousness of "youth and grace, and"—in short, I was satisfied with myself—when—