Is strange. Granted; don't draw back; come, a cordial gripe. We are friends; we have both suffered from the same cause. There, that's right--honest palm to palm. Now, how say you--have you ever wanted twenty pounds? READER.--Frankly, then, I have. Mind to mind, as hand to hand. Have you felt as I did? Did its want cloud the sun, wither the grass, and blight the bud? READER.--It did. But how, marry, how? What! you decline confession--so you may--I'll be more explicit. I was abroad, far from my "father-land"--there's a magic in the word!--the turf we've played on, the hearts we love, the graves we venerate--all, all combine to concentrate its charm. READER.--You are digressing. Thank you, I am; but I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience. The golden dream was soon to end--end even with the yellow dross that gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness--three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked generation;"--he bowed to others--galvanism could not have procured the tithe of a salaam for me. His till was afflicted with a sort of sinking-fundishness. I was the contractor of "the small bill," whose exact amount would enable him to meet a "heavy payment;" my very garments were "tabooed" from all earth's decencies; splashes seemed to have taken a lease of the bottoms of my trousers. My boots, once objects of the tenderest care of their unworthy namesake, seemed conscious of the change, and drooped in untreed wretchedness, desponding at the wretched wrinkles now ruffling the once smooth calf! My coat no more appeared to catch the dust; as if under the influence of some invisible charm, its white-washed elbows never struck upon the sight of the else all-seeing boots; spider never rushed from his cell with the post-haste speed with which he issued from his dark recess, to pick the slightest cobweb that ever harnessed Queen Mab's team, from _other_ coats; a gnat, a wandering hair left its location, swept by the angry brush from the broad-cloth of those who paid their bills--as far as I was concerned--all were inoculated with this strange blindness. It was an overwhelming ophthalmia! The chambermaid, through its fatality, never discovered that my jugs were empty, my bottle clothed with slimy green, my soap-dish left untenanted. A day before this time had been sufficient service for my hand-towel; now a week seemed to render it less fit to taste the rubs of hands and soap. Dust lost its vice, and lay unheeded in the crammed corner of my luckless room. READER.--I feel for you.