My dear Honeyman, you who, as I hear, are about to follow the flutes of Aphrodite into a temple where Hymen gilds the horns of the victims {147}—you, I am sure, will hurry to my rescue. You may not have the specie actually in your coffers; but with your prospects, surely you can sign something, or make over something, or back something, say a _post obit_ or _post vincula_, or employ some other instrument? Excuse my inexperience; or, I should say, excuse my congenital inability to profit by experience, now considerable, of _difficulties_—and of friendship. Let not the sun of May-day go down on Harold Skimpole in Coavins’s!—Yours ever, H. S. P.S.—A youthful myrmidon of Coavins’s will wait for a reply. Shall we say, while we are about it, Twenty-five? * * * * * _From the Rev. Charles Honeyman to Harold Skimpole_, _Esq._ Cursitor Street, May 1. MY DEAR SKIMPOLE,—How would I have joyed, had Providence placed it within my power to relieve your distress! But it cannot be. Like the Carthaginian Queen of whom we read in happier days at dear old Borhambury, I may say that I am _haud ignarus mali_. But, alas! the very evils in which I am not unlearned, make it impossible for me to add _miseris succurrere disco_! Rather am I myself in need of succour. You, my dear Harold, have fallen among thieves; I may too truly add that in this I am your neighbour. The dens in which we are lodged are contiguous; we are separated only by the bars. Your note was sent on hither from my rooms in Walpole Street. Since we met I have known the utmost that woman’s perfidy and the rich man’s contumely can inflict. But I can bear my punishment. I loved, I trusted. She to whose hand I aspired, she on whose affections I had based hopes at once of happiness in life and of extended usefulness in the clerical profession, _she_ was less confiding. She summoned to her council a minion of the Law, one Briggs. _His_ estimate of my position and prospects could not possibly tally with that of one whose _hopes_ are not set where the worldling places them. Let him, and such as he, take thought for the morrow and chaffer about settlements. I do not regret the gold to which you so delicately allude. I sorrow only for the bloom that has been brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested affection. _Sunt lacrymæ rerum_, and the handkerchief in which I bury my face is dank with them.