Without somewhat of the grace of natural timidity, the most splendid performance could scarcely please; with what feeling then, but that of unqualified disgust, could such a display as we have just described have been witnessed; while Geoffery, who had the part of a lover not only of music, but of the lady to maintain, was thereby called upon to enact raptures. Fips's wife had died, in giving birth to this only child. Fips was then a poor clerk. When the child began to require the aid of a first school, he lodged in a garret, and dined in a cellar, that he might be able to defray the expense. Yet, strange to say, notwithstanding this seeming noble self-denial, his was not a worthy nor a genuine affection; he was incapable of such. In the first place, he was naturally a man of parsimonious habits, and imbued with a prudent sense of the necessity of giving to persons unprovided for, at least an education, that they might be able to do something for themselves. The sentiment, however, which he mistook for affection, was little better than gratified vanity. The child happened to be very beautiful; to which his attention was particularly drawn, by the circumstance of his being often obliged, for want of mother or nurse-maid, to walk out with it himself. When he did so, almost every one they met would turn to look or to make some comment as they passed. Sometimes, groups would stop and speak to the child; kiss it, ask it to shake hands, &c. On such occasions Fips would stop also, and becoming imboldened, desire his little girl to look up, and show its pretty eyes; to laugh, and show its pretty teeth; then, its pretty mouth, its rosy lips, its lovely colour, its beautiful skin, its pretty curls, its pretty foot, would each in succession form a topic for eulogy, till the poor child was hardened into little better than a hawked-about show while Fips, to whom his little girl, through the medium of gratified vanity, otherwise _pride_, thus became a source of pleasure, fancied himself a fond father. As the child grew, Fips having no principles himself could not impart any. Meanwhile, his fortunes also grew rapidly, not without suspicions that he had found out by-ways to the attainment of riches, which he would have been very sorry to have pointed out to a fellow-traveller. The possession of wealth, in the course of time, suggested the necessity for the fashionable finishing-school already mentioned.