As the host, too, I received a very flattering amount of homage; foreigners always yield a willing respect to anything in authority, and my own countrymen soon caught up the habit, as though it implied a knowledge of life and the world. I had not the slightest suspicion that my general manners or bearing were becoming affected by these deferences, till I accidentally overheard a Cockney observe to his wife, “I think he's pompious,” a censure that made me very unhappy, and led me to much self-examination and reflection. Had I really grown what the worthy citizen called “pom-pious,”--had I become puffed up by prosperity, and over-exalted in self-conceit? If so, it were time to look to this at once. The directors, generally, were well pleased with me. Very gratifying testimonials of their approval reached me; and it was only my uncle's opposition prevented my salary being augmented. “Don't spoil the fellow,” he said; “you'll have him betting on the Derby, or keeping a yacht at Cowes, if you don't look out sharp. I 'd rather cut him down a hundred than advance him fifty.” This fiat from my own flesh and blood decided the matter. I sulked on this. I had grown prosperous enough to feel indignant, and I resolved to afford myself the well-to-do luxury of discontent. I was, therefore, discontented. I professed that to maintain my position--whatever that meant--I was obliged to draw upon my own private resources; and I went so far as to intimate to the visitors that if I had n't been a man of some fortune the place would be my ruin! Of course my hint got bruited about, and the people commonly said, “If Gosslett goes, the whole concern will break up. They 'll not easily find a man of good private fortune, willing to spend his money here, like Gosslett,” and such like, till I vow and declare I began to believe my own fiction, and regard it as an indelible fact. If my letter was not on record, I would not now believe the fact; but the document exists, and I have seen it, where I actually threaten to send my resignation if something--I forget what--is not speedily conceded to my demands; and it was only on receiving an admonition in the mild vein peculiar to my uncle that I awoke to a sense of my peril, and of what became me.