“The king, by merely laying sword on,
Could make a knight of Jemmy Gordon.”
At a late assize at Cambridge, a man named Pilgrim was convicted of horse-stealing, and sentenced to transportation. Gordon seeing the prosecutor in the street, loudly vociferated to him, “You, sir, have done what the pope of Rome cannot do; you have put a stop to Pilgrim’s Progress!”
Gordon was met one day by a person of rather indifferent character, who pitied Jemmy’s forlorn condition, (he being without shoes and stockings,) and said, “Gordon, if you will call at my house, I will give you a pair of shoes.” Jemmy, assuming a contemptuous air, replied, “No, sir! excuse me, I would not stand in your shoes for all the world!”
Some months ago, Jemmy had the misfortune to fall from a hay-loft, wherein he had retired for the night, and broke his thigh; since then he has reposed in a workhouse. No man’s life is more calculated
“To adorn a moral, and to point a tale.”
N.
These brief memoranda suffice to memorialize a peculiar individual. James Gordon at one time possessed “fame, wealth, and honours:” now—his “fame” is a hapless notoriety; all the “wealth” that remains to him is a form that might have been less careworn had he been less careless; his honour is “air—thin air,” “his gibes, his jests, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar,” no longer enliven the plenteous banquet:—
“Deserted in his utmost need
By men his former bounty fed,”
the bitter morsel for his life’s support is parish dole. “The gayest of the gay” is forgotten in his age—in the darkness of life; when reflection on what was, cannot better what is. Brilliant circles of acquaintance sparkle with frivolity, but friendship has no place within them. The prudence of sensuality is selfishness.