"In his dispensary," says Mr. Leigh, "the doctor had one drawer amongst his boxes, in which there were pills of gentle efficacy, intended to be served out (they were made, I believe, of bread and soap) to the generality of his customers. This receptacle bore the label of 'Pil. Hum.,'--abbreviation of humbug--or, as their concoctor used to call them, 'Humbugeraneous Pills.' The Dr. Cockle to whom, Mr. Leigh says, Leech went after he left Mr. Whittle, was the son of the inventor of Cockle's Pills. "No sooner had he become of age," continues Mr. Leigh, "than he was induced, in order to meet difficulties for which he was not responsible, to accept an accommodation bill, which the drawer of, when it fell due, failed to supply the means of meeting. Leech was consequently arrested for debt at the suit of this discounter, and lodged in a sponging-house kept by a sheriff's officer, a Jew, by name (I think) of Levi, in Newman Street. There he remained about a fortnight, supporting himself in the meanwhile by drawing cartoons and caricatures. He lithographed them on stone for Spooner, in the Strand, at a guinea each, a _friend_ having negotiated their sale. "At last, an advance of money on a projected publication sufficient to discharge the debt having been obtained, he was liberated. But not long after, a second scrape--a repetition of the first--cost him another temporary sojourn with another Jew in another sponging-house in Cursitor Street. This detention, however, lasted but a few days. _From that period to the close of his life_ he remained subject to repeated demands for pecuniary assistance under continued pressure, which, as at the outset, he could not withstand. The deficits he had to defray were always heavy; the last of them, as I understand, a thousand pounds. It cost him very hard work to make it good. Excess of generosity was his greatest failing." I have no means of knowing, nor do I desire to know, who the borrowers were to whom Percival Leigh alludes; but his revelations make the fact of Leech having died a comparatively poor man comprehensible enough. If ever man was killed by overwork, Leech was that man, and this must be a painful reflection for those whose incessant demands upon him made it only possible for him to meet them by the incessant exertions which destroyed him. Mr. Leigh's paper concludes with the anecdote that follows: "Leech and Albert Smith worked together very harmoniously as illustrator and writer in several books--'Ledbury,' 'Brinvilliers,' and many others--and one day when they were leaving Smith's house together, a street-boy stepped up to them, and scoffing at the inscription on Smith's large brass door-plate, cried: "'Oh yes! Mr. Albert Smith, M.R.C.S., Surgeon-Dentist.' "'Good boy!' said Leech, putting a penny into the boy's hand; 'now go and insult somebody else.'" CHAPTER IV. MEETING OF MULREADY AND LEECH.