‘You seriously think, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘that his opinion is false?’ ‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, somewhat nettled, ‘I do not know what right any one can have to ask a man of my cloth what he seriously thinks, when all that the world has to do with is what he seriously says.’ ‘Then you seriously say it, sir?’ said Mr. Fax. ‘I do, sir,’ said the divine; ‘and for this very orthodox reason, that the system of paper-money is inseparably interwoven with the present order of things, and the present order of things I have made up my mind to stick by, precisely as long as it lasts.’ ‘_And no longer?_’ said Mr. Fax. ‘I am no fool, sir,’ said the divine. ‘But, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘as you seem to have perceived the instability of what is called (like _lucus a non lucendo_) the _firm_ of Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company, why did not you warn your flock of the impending danger?’ ‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘I dined every week with one of the partners.’ Mr. Forester took notice of an elderly woman who was sitting with a small handful of dirty paper, weeping bitterly on the step of a door. ‘Forgive my intrusion,’ said he; ‘I need not ask you why you weep; the cause is in your hand.’—‘Ah, sir!’ said the poor woman, who could hardly speak for sobbing, ‘all the savings of twenty years taken from me in a moment; and my poor boy, when he comes home from sea——’ She could say no more: grief choked her utterance. ‘Good God!’ said Mr. Fax, ‘did you lay by your savings in country paper?’ ‘O sir!’ said the poor woman, ‘how was I to know that one piece of paper was not as good as another? And everybody said that the firm of Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company was as good as the Bank of England.’ She then unfolded one of the _promises to pay_, and fell to weeping more bitterly than ever. Mr. Forester comforted her as well as he could; but he found the purchasing of one or two of her notes much more efficacious than all the lessons of his philosophy. ‘This is all your fault,’ said a fisherman to his wife; ‘you would be hoarding and hoarding, and stinting me of my drop of comfort when I came in after a hard day’s work, tossed and beaten, and wet through with salt water, and there’s what we’ve got by it.’ ‘It was all your fault,’ retorted the wife; ‘when we had scraped together twenty as pretty golden guineas as ever laid in a chest, you would sell ’em, so you would, for twenty-seven pounds of Mr. Smokeshadow’s paper; _and now you see the difference_.’ ‘Here is an illustration,’ said Mr. Fax to Mr. Forester, ‘of the old maxim of _experience teaching wisdom_, or, as Homer expresses it, ῥεχθεν δε τε νηπιος ἐγνω.’