“Let one little anecdote illustrate. Mr. Albert Pompilard, now some eighty years old, has been in his day a great operator in Wall Street. He has made half a dozen large fortunes and lost them. Five years ago, by a series of bold and fortunate speculations, he placed himself once more on the top round of the financial ladder. He paid off all his debts with interest, pensioned off a widowed daughter, lifted up from the gutter several old, broken-down friends, and advanced a handsome sum to his literary son-in-law, Mr. Cecil Purling, who had found, as he thought, a short cut to fortune. Pompilard also bought a stylish place on the Hudson; and people supposed he would be content to keep aloof from the stormy fluctuations of Wall Street. “But one day he read in the financial column of the newspaper certain facts that roused the old propensity. His near neighbor was a rich retired tailor, a Mr. Maloney, an Irishman, who used to come over to play billiards with the venerable stock-jobber. Pompilard had made a visit to Wall Street the day before. He had been fired with a grand scheme of buying up the whole of a certain stock (in which sellers at sixty days at a low figure were abundant) and then holding on for a grand rise. He did not find it difficult to kindle the financial enthusiasm of poor Snip. “Brief, the two simpletons went into the speculation, and lost every cent they were worth in the world. Simultaneously with their break-down, Purling, the son-in-law, managed to lose all that had been confided to his hands. The widowed daughter, Mrs. Ireton, gave up all the little estate her father had settled on her. Poor Maloney had to go back to his goose; and Pompilard, now almost an octogenarian, has been obliged, he and his family, to take lodgings in the cottage of his late gardener. “The other day Mr. Hicks, a friend of the family, learning that they were actually pinched in their resources, ventured to call upon Charlton for a contribution for their relief. After an evident inward struggle, Charlton manfully pulled out his pocket-book, and tendered—what, think you?—why, a ten-dollar bill! Hicks affected to regard the tender as an insult, and slapped the donor’s face. Charlton at first threatened a prosecution, but concluded it was too expensive a luxury. Thus you see he is a miser. It was with no little satisfaction, therefore, that I called to communicate the state of his affairs in New Orleans.