It were hard to believe that so noble a prince as Henry the Fifth took advantage of this generous act, and fortunately history does not tell us whether the debt remained unpaid because the evidence of it was destroyed. Let us give the King the benefit of the doubt, and trust that the money was afterward honorably repaid, and went to swell the number of those charities with which the name of Sir Richard Whittington is for all time connected.
No one person of that time has left greater or more varied proofs of benevolence. The sick who lay in the wards of St. Bartholomew's Hospital blessed the memory of its benefactor, the great Lord Mayor; and the felons confined in the cells of Newgate Prison owed their comparative comfort to that kind heart which recognized the fact that even those whom crime has outlawed from society are still our fellow-beings. Scholars owe to the 'prentice lad, whose own schooling was mostly of the sternest practical sort, the foundation of a college and two libraries, which are still in existence; and thanks are due to him in great part for the nave of Westminster Abbey, the cost of building which Whittington bore in common with another London merchant.
But Whittington was above all things a great merchant, and, as such, did much for commerce. Some of our readers may have seen the London Directory, an immense, closely printed book, which contains the names and residences of nearly four millions of people. Five hundred years ago Sir Richard Whittington caused to be prepared a directory of all the trades in London, and thus was the first, so far as we know, to issue what has now become a necessity in our daily business, and as familiar as it is necessary—a City Directory.
Do you not think he is rightly called "the model merchant of the Middle Ages?"
[BITS OF ADVICE.]
BY AUNT MARJORIE PRECEPT.
"I BEG YOUR PARDON."
When little Tom Macaulay was about four years old, he was taken by his father to call upon Lady Waldegrave, at Strawberry Hill, and there an awkward servant spilled some hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was very sorry indeed, and after a while asked him if he felt any better.