According to these arrangements, Mr Crabbin commenced business again; and, having been taught experience by his former failure, did very well. We believe there were at least two or three additional children born afterwards; but that was of no consequence, because Mr Crabbin's means became, by his own industry, proportionate. A good lesson hangeth by the peg of our tale, or we are somewhat out.
THE SERJEANT'S TALES.
THE IMPRUDENT MARRIAGE.
Serjeant Square again resumed the narrative of his adventures:—
There is a strange feeling, that every reflecting person must have often been conscious of, accompanying the idea of time. We feel as if in contact with the past, as far back as our memory can reach. If our reading has been extensive, it requires reflection to disentangle the events of early ages, as well as those of a more recent date; and, even as regards the time to come, we feel as if it also were for us, until the melancholy certainty of the shortness of life forces us back upon the present moment, which, until passed, we cannot call our own. Neither is there a situation in which we can be placed, in which we do not feel some cause of uneasiness, from the faintest shade of unfulfilled anticipation, to the depth of real suffering.
Gloomy were the reflections that haunted my mind for the first three weeks after my arrival in London. Often and far as I had been from Scotland, never until now had I been home-sick—if it could be called so in one who had neither kindred nor home in the world. Destitute of kindred as I was, the feeling seemed to extend my relationship: every Scotchman being my relation, and his accents music to my ears. An unaccountable melancholy was upon me; and I felt a strange presentiment as if some evil were about to befall me. I felt no pleasure, as I was wont, in walking about. My time was spent at my lodgings, in Lower Thames Street, save when I went occasionally to the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, to visit Captain H——. Even these visits had become irksome, as no good seemed likely to arise to me from them. I was always received in the most friendly manner. Still there was a constraint upon me I could not overcome, arising from the relative situation in which we had formerly stood towards each other as private seaman and captain. I would have felt far more at my ease had he treated me in a more distant manner. Frugal as my mode of life was, my cash wore done apace, and I had fixed upon no mode of obtaining a new supply. Once or twice I had made inquiries among the shipping for a situation, without success. Perhaps the fault was my own, as I was rather nice to please, and not over anxious to go to sea if I could do better. I hoped that the captain or his friend would propose something for my advantage; and thus the time had run on, while my lowness of spirits increased upon me. The weather had become wet and foggy. I cared not to leave the house, and remained at home for several days, so depressed that I even wished I were dead, and away from a world in which I had suffered so much. The pleasures I had also enjoyed were entirely blotted out from my recollection. All my life appeared to have been a scene of suffering, with no prospect before me but further misery and endurance.
This was a state of mind that could not long endure without leading to a fatal result. I began to regard suicide as the only remedy for my misery; and even to look upon it as a crime of no very deep atrocity. Yet there was a feeling within me that made death as a remedy horrible. At length, by an effort that cost me more to accomplish than anything I had ever done before or since, I shook off this, the darkest moral incubus of the darkest period of my life, and, after an absence of ten days, waited upon Captain H—— to bid him farewell, as I was resolved to leave London, and enter on board the first vessel wherever bound for, and in any capacity I could obtain a berth. When I reached the house, I found it shut up, and could obtain no information whither he had gone. All I learned was, that they had left the house three days before, it was believed for the country. I felt indignant and hurt, although I had no reason, at this sudden departure. I had no claim upon him. I had ever been overpaid for any service I had rendered. Still, this was not my feeling at the time; and I bent my steps towards my lodgings in no enviable mood, either with myself or the world. A numbing sensation was upon me. I felt once more alone in the world; and passed through the busy crowds that thronged the streets, almost unconscious of the presence of a human being, until I had reached Tower Hill, when my attention was roused by a crowd of men and boys, who were hooting and jostling an old man of rather respectable appearance, whose impatient anger caused them only to increase their shouts and annoyance. They were calling to him, "Rebel Scot," and "Scottish traitor;" and crying, "Roll him in the kennel," "Duck him in the river." I was in a humour to quarrel with any one, or even dare a host. My blood was on fire in a moment, for the old man upbraided them in Scotch, although tinctured by a foreign accent. He was tall, and had once been a very powerful man. His hat had been knocked off, and his grey hairs were in disorder, save what were retained by a neat cue that bobbed from side to side, as he was pushed, or turned to aim a blow at his cowardly assailants, many of whom, I blush to say, had reached man's estate. In an instant I was by his side, and shouted, to overtop the noise—
"For shame, to use an old man and a stranger so! Is that like Englishmen?"