Let me take an instance which I am sure you will remember. When I first met little DABCHICK, I thought I had never seen a happier mortal. He was clever, good-natured, and sprightly. He sold tea somewhere in Mincing Lane, and on the proceeds of his sales he managed to support a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort at Balham. Mrs. DABCHICK could not be accused by her best friends of over-refinement, but everybody agreed that she was just the homely, comfortable, housewifely person who would always make DABCHICK happy, and be a good and careful mother to his children. Often in the old days when I came down to Balham and took pot-luck with DABCHICK, while Mrs. DABCHICK beamed serenity and middle-class satisfaction upon me from the other end of the table, and the juvenile JOHNNY DABCHICK recited in a piping treble one of Mr. GEORGE R. SIMS's most moving pieces for our entertainment, often, I say, have I envied the simple happiness of that family, and gone back to my bachelor chambers with an increased sense of dissatisfaction. Why, I thought to myself, had fate denied to me the peaceful domesticity of the DABCHICKS? I was as good a man as DABCHICK, probably, if the truth were known, a better than he. Yet there he was with a good wife, an agreeable family, and a comfortable income to compensate him for his extravagance with the letter h, while I had to toil and moil in solitary gloom. Now, however, all is changed. In an evil moment for himself, DABCHICK speculated largely and successfully in the Gold Trust of Guatemala. In a very short time his income was multiplied by ten. The usual results followed. The happy home in Balham was given up. "People about here," said DABCHICK, "are such poor snobs"--and a more ornate mansion in South Kensington was taken in its stead. The old friends and the old habits were dropped. JOHNNY DABCHICK was sent to Eton with an immoderate allowance of pocket-money, and was promptly christened "PEKOE" by his schoolfellows. Mrs. DABCHICK rides in a huge landau with blue wheels, and leaves cards on the fringes of the aristocracy. DABCHICK himself aspires to Parliament, and never keeps the same circle of friends for more than about six months. He knows one shady Viscount to whom rumour asserts that he has lent immense sums of Guatemalan money, and the approach of a Marquis makes him palpitate with emotion. But he is a profoundly miserable man. Of that I am assured. It amuses me when I meet him in pompous society to address him lightly as "DAB," and remind him of the dear old Balham days, and the huge amount of bird's-eye we used to smoke together. For his motto now is, "_Delenda est Balhamia_"--I speak of course figuratively--and half-crown havannahs have usurped the place of the honest briar. I know the poor wretch is making up his mind to cut me, but I must bear it as best I may.