"No indeed!" began Barnabas.
"I think you were, sir—every one does, every one—it can't be missed, sir, and I—hem! I'm extreme conscious of it myself, sirs. I really must discard this old coat, but—hem! I'm attached to it—foolish sentiment, sirs. I wear it for associations' sake, it awakens memory, and memory is a blessed thing, sirs, a very blessed thing!"
"Sometimes!" sighed Barnabas.
"In me, sirs, you behold a decayed gentleman, yet one who has lived in his time, but now, sirs, all that remains to me is—this coat. A prince once commended it, the Beau himself condescended to notice it! Yes, sirs, I was rich once and happily married, and my friends were many. But—my best friend deceived and ruined me, my wife fled away and left me, sirs, my friends all forsook me and, to-day, all that I have to remind me of what I was when I was young and lived, is this old coat. To-day I exist as a law-writer, to-day I am old, and with my vanished youth hope has vanished too. And I call myself a decayed gentleman because I'm—fading, sirs. But to fade is genteel; Brummell faded! Yes, one may fade and still be a gentleman, but who ever heard of a fading ploughman?"
"Who, indeed?" said Barnabas.
"But to fade, sir," continued the little gentleman, lifting a thin, bloodless hand, "though genteel, is a slow process and a very weary one. Without the companionship of Hope, life becomes a hard and extreme long road to the ultimate end, and therefore I am sometimes greatly tempted to take the—easier course, the—shorter way."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, sir, there are other names for it, but—hem!—I prefer to call it 'the shorter way.'"
"Do you mean—suicide?"
"Sir," cried Mr. Bimby, shivering and raising protesting hands, "I said 'the shorter way.' Poor little Miss Pell—a lady born, sir—she used to curtsy to me on the stairs, she chose 'the shorter way.' She also was old, you see, and weary. And to-night I met another who sought to take this 'shorter way'—but he was young, and for the young there is always hope. So I brought him home with me and tried to comfort him, but I fear—"