one of his own rank, he offered to _lend_ him such a sum of money as would enable him to begin the world again, and expressly stipulated that he should be repaid by instalments varying with the price of mackerel and the success of the fishing. “If once you get your head above water, I know you can swim like a duck,” said Frank, grasping the honest fellow’s hand, “so say no more about it. We’ll have rare times in the yawl before the summer’s quite done with; and till then, God bless you, old friend, and good luck to you!” As Hairblower himself expressed it, “you might have knocked him down with a feather.” How different the world looked to Frank when he parted with his old companion from what it had seemed some few hours before, as he left the great house in Grosvenor Square. There is an infallible recipe for lowness of spirits, nervousness, causeless misery, and mental irritation, which beats all Dr. Willis’s restorative nostrums, and emancipates the sufferer more rapidly than even the famous “Ha! ha! Cured in an instant!” remedy. When oppressed with _ennui_, the poet says-- “Throw but a stone, the giant dies!” and so, when the bright sky above seems leaden to your eyes--when the song of birds, the prattle of children, or the gush of waters, fall dully upon your ear--when the outward world is all vanity of vanities and existence seems a burden, and, as Thackeray says, “Life is a mistake”--go and do a kindly action, no matter how or where or to whom; but, at any sacrifice, at any inconvenience, go and do it--and take an old man’s word for it, you will not repent. Straightway the fairy comes down the kitchen chimney, and touches your whole being with her wand. Straightway the sun bursts out with a brilliant smile, the birds take up a joyous carol, the children’s voices are like the morning hymn of a seraph choir, and the babbling of the stream woos your entranced ear with the silver notes of Nature’s own melody. Those are now steeds from Araby which seemed but rats and mice an hour or two ago. That is a glittering equipage which you had scouted as a huge, unsightly pumpkin. You yourself, no longer crouching in dust and ashes, start upright, with your face to heaven, attired in the only robe that preserves eternal freshness, the only garment you shall take away with you when you have done with all the rest--the web of charity, that cloak which covers a multitude of sins. You have, besides, this advantage over Cinderella--that whereas her glass slippers and corresponding splendour must be laid aside before midnight, your enchantment shall outlast the morrow; your fairy’s wand can reach from earth to heaven; your kindly action is entered in a book from which there is no erasure, whereof the pages shall be read before men and angels, and shall endure from everlasting to everlasting. CHAPTER XVI FORGERY OUR HUMBLE ACQUAINTANCES--THE SCRATCH OF A PEN--A SCOUT’S INFORMATION--THE MAJOR’S MEDITATIONS, NOT FANCY-FREE