Beware, then, how your sympathizing nature induces you to accost Tribulation Trepid in the highway, unless you are proof against the contagious influences of sorrow, and are firmly fixed in the confidence of your own hope; for it seems to afford a mournful satisfaction to all the Trepids to bring others down to their own melancholy level. “You may try,” say they—“no objection to any body’s trying—but it’s not often that trying comes to any thing. Whatever it may be, it will never answer—we never knew things to answer. Things never answer nowadays,” with various other assurances of a like enlivening nature. Beware, then, of the effect of contact with the Trepids, unless your nature is of that sanguine sort which bids defiance to the chill, and has hardihood to sport itself safely in December’s snow. “How are you Trepid? How do you feel to-day, Mr. Trepid?” [Illustration] “A great deal worse than I was, thank’ee—’most dead, I am obliged to you—I’m always worse than I was, and I don’t think I was ever any better. I’m very sure, any how, that I’m not going to be any better; and, for the future, you may always know I’m worse without asking any questions; for the questions make me worse, if nothing else does.” “Why, Trepid, what’s the matter with you?” “Nothing, I tell you, in particular; but a great deal is the matter with me in general; and that’s the danger, because we don’t know what it is. That’s what kills people—when they can’t tell what it is—that’s what’s killing me. My great grandfather died of it, he did, and so will I. The doctor’s don’t know—they can’t tell—they say I’m well enough, when I’m bad enough; and so there’s no help. I’m going off some of these days, right after my great grandfather, dying of nothing in particular, but of every thing in general. That’s what finishes our folks.” But as Tribulation Trepid has now got under way in reference to his bodily health, it may be as well to suffer him to explain himself in the matter of his pecuniary relations, which are in quite as bad a condition. “Well, but, Trepid, how do you come on otherwise? Why don’t you go into some sort of business and keep a shop.” “Keep a shop!—what’s the use of my keeping a shop? If I keep a shop, nobody would ever come into it; and if they did come in, they wouldn’t buy any thing. Didn’t I try once, and nobody came, because they said I hadn’t enough of an assortment? Ketch me! Why did they not buy what I had, instead of trying to coax me to get things, which they would not have bought after all? Me keep a shop! Yes, to be sold out by the sheriff—I’m always sold out—don’t I know it beforehand?”