I will pass over my school-days, merely observing en passant that
"Each day some unlucky disaster
Placed me in the vocative case with my master,"
a squabby, tyrannical, double-jointed pedagogue. He was nicknamed Cane-and-Able, and I can testify to the justness of the nomenclature. At college the same mis-fortune attended me. There was ever an under-current of disappointment, which rendered all my exertions nugatory. If I was by accident "full of the god," I could never knock down any one but a proctor. If I determined on keeping close in my rooms, the wind immediately changed to N.E. by N. at which point my chimneys smoked like a community of Ya-Mynheers. My maternal uncle, Theodosius Otter, Esq. had signified that my expectations from him must be regulated entirely by my academical distinctions, and I was "pluck'd for my little-go." This occurred three months before the old booby's death. My legacy consisted of a presentation to the Gooseborough free school.
The time at length arrived for me to fall in love. I experienced the first symptom of this epidemic at a bombazine ball in the city of Norwich. Selina Smithers was the name of my fair enslaver: she was about nineteen, fair as Russia tallow, tall, and somewhat slender. Indeed her condition is perhaps better described by "the slightest possible approximation to lanky." During one short quadrille she told me of all her tastes, hopes, experience, family connexions, (including a brother at sea,) expectations probable and possible, and of two thousand seven hundred and forty-five pounds, fourteen shillings, and sixpence, standing in her own name in the three and a half per cents.
With the last chassez I was a victim. At the close of the ball I handed Selina and her mamma into a green fly, and found the next morning that I had a violent cold in my head, and a violent heat in my heart.
As I flourished the brass knocker of Mrs. Smithers' door on the following day, the clock of St. Andrew's church struck two; and chimed a quarter past, as a girl strongly resembling a kidney-potato, red and dirty, gave me ingress into a room with green blinds, seven horsehair-bottomed chairs, a round mahogany table, four oil-paintings (subjects and masters unknown), two fire-screens of yellow calico fluted, and a very shabby square piano. On the music-rest was the song, "We met,—'twas in a crowd." Singular coincidence,—we met in a crowd!
The door opened, and Selina bounded into the room like a young fawn. Our eyes met, and then simultaneously sought the carpet. I know not what object her pale blue orbs encountered; but mine fell on the half-picked head of a red herring! "Can it be possible," thought I, "that Selina—Pshaw! her brother has returned from sea;" and to his account I placed the body of the vulgar fish. I took her hand, and gracefully led her to a chair, and then seated myself beside her. Our conversation grew animated,—confiding. She recapitulated the amount of her three and a half per cents, and in the most considerate manner inquired into my pecuniary situation. I was then possessed of seven thousand pounds; for my father, during the three last years of his life, had been twice burned out, and once sold up, and was thus enabled to leave me independent. She could not conceal her delight at my prosperous situation,—generous creature! Possessing affluence herself, she rejoiced at the well-doing of others. Day after day passed in this delightful manner, until I ventured to solicit her to become my wife. Judge of my ecstasy when, bending her swan-like neck until her fair cheek rested on the velvet collar of my mulberry surtout, she whispered almost inaudibly,
"How can you ask me such a question?"
"How can I ask you such a question? Because—because it is necessary to my happiness. Oh! name the happy hour when Hymen's chain—that chain which has but one link—shall bind you to me for ever!"