"What though it bringeth some sorrow to remember the angelic face and form I saw, for the last time, but an hour before I cut thee from thy parent tree, Ah! how well doth life assort the lot of its inheritors, even when they most deeply repine! The sea devoured my Mary—my beauty, my only love, and I repined that she was not spared to share my riches and possessions; alas! would she not have had to share my lot, also, in this alms-house? Indeed, my friend, I was blessed that I gained thy friendship that night, when my love was taken from me, for how great a comfort hast thou been to me!
"I tender thee these my heartfelt thanks, now our long and interesting friendship is in the yellow leaf! Many a mile hast thou travelled with me,—unfailingly hast thou supported my steps in manhood and old age,—in all weathers,—and never shrunk from me, nor upbraided either my haste or my tarrying, my speed or my slowness, my lavishness or my poverty; but Hugh Clifford cannot expect, in the nature of things, to remain with thee much longer. He loves thee so well, that he would fain thou mightst be laid by his side in the grave: yet such a request may be met churlishly by those who provide Hugh's coffin,—and thou mayst become the support of another, who will, peradventure, proudly call thee his 'property' instead of his 'companion!'"
"Farewell, then, my dearly-beloved and highly valued friend—farewell! but not before I have more fully thanked thee:——
"Above all, my precious crooked stick, I return thee hearty thanks that thou hast been to me a truthful mirror—yea, a bright and glittering looking-glass,—although the eye of the undiscerning, and of those who judge after the outward seeming and surface appearance, would misreckon thee to be a dry, dull, opaque crooked crab-stick! Yea, a mirror, I say, thou hast been to me,—reflecting upon my spiritual retina,—the judgment,—that great fact, which, in my folly, I oft would have hidden from myself,—that I resembled thee!
"Yet, thou pitiedest me in thy heart,—hard and unfeeling as some would say that heart must be, the heart of a crooked crab-stick!—yea, thou pitiedst me therein, and didst still from thy old corner regard me with the same unflatteringly argumentative and admonitory aspect,—penetrating my heart with the faithful language of thine: 'Hugh! look at me and know thyself.'
"And I have looked at thee, and I do now look at thee, and in thy veritable crookedness I behold my own!"
"Reader,—who wilt find this my solemn and earnest soliloquy, when I am gone,—hast thou a crooked stick?
"'I, Mr. Clifford!' answers some young puppy of one-and-twenty, who, perchance, may take my paper into his dainty fingers, 'I am not so vulgar as to carry a crooked stick: my cane is most beautifully polished, and it is a perfectly straight one!'"
"Pshaw! my brave lad! I sought not thy answer: do not be so pert: think more, and talk less, for the next thirty years; and then re-consider my question.
"'I understand your censorious query, Mr. Clifford,' says another, some score of years older, and with less buckram but more gauze in his composition—'I understand you: but the fact is, my stick is not a crooked stick: it is perfectly straight, and hath always been straight: 'tis the evil-disposed and calumnious world who call it crooked: albeit, if they would only view it aright, they would perceive that all the parts of it which they think crooked and perverse are direct as a geometrical right line!'