"Oh!" said Tickle, who seemed vastly diverted by my embarrassment, "that is soon done. You are a dandy of pure blood, and poor as a church mouse, but not yet out of favour. Your father, who was a dandy before you, and in prime esteem, having bought his way into notice with two or three cargoes of indigo and young hyson (for he was an India merchant), properly laid out in elegant entertainments, gave up trade to live a gentleman, and died one; leaving you, an elegant fellow and ignoramus, as a gentleman's son should be, to spend his leavings. This you have done, Dawky, and most gloriously. For five years, none of us, the sons of nabobocracy, could compare with you in dash, flash, and splash. But even Phaeton fell! Horses galloped away, buggies and curricles rolled into the gutter, and tailors looked alarmed--stocks flew out at the window, bricks and mortar took to themselves wings, and your stockings began to want darning. Then said Dawkins, 'I will marry a wife,' and he looked loving at Periwinkle's fair daughter; and Periwinkle's fair daughter looked loving at Dawkins; and Dawkins calling counsel of his friend, John Tickle, of Ticklesbury Manor, beheld and lo! Periwinkle's fair daughter's father's fine estate was fenced round with rows of mortgages, as thick and thorny as prickly-pears. Whereupon the inconstant swain, forgetting his vows, ran to the elegant Miss Small, who smiled on him, and married another; and the loss of this adorable fair, fortune and all, together with an uncommon fit of dunning, so affected my friend's spirits, that he threw himself into the Schuylkill, whence he was fished by a fellow called What-d'-ye-call-it, a brewer." "Well," said I; "but do you mean to say I have squandered all my property?" "Every sous," said my friend; "it is just six weeks since you spent the last dollar of the last term of your annuity." "What annuity?" said I. "Why, the five years' annuity you bought of old Goldfist. Is it possible you don't recollect _him_? Don't you remember the row of negro-houses you owned down in Southwark?" "I don't," said I. "A piece of arrant cheating! sheer swindling!" said Tickle; "but when did old Skinner ever make an honest bargain? The houses and lot of ground worth two thousand, as they stood; but title good and indefeisible, and capable of being made worth twenty thousand: I remember you offered 'em to old Goldfist for seven. What said the old hunks? 'Give me immediate possession, and thereupon you shall have a bonus of a thousand on the nail, together with the same sum yearly for five years, provided you live so long--if not, then as long as you live.' Snapped like a gudgeon, and was bit; and on the fifth year--beginning of August last, had the last integer of payment, with comfort of seeing a property you had sold for six thousand, yielding its possessor just that much a year." "The geds!" said I; "has old Goldfist six thousand a year?" "Say sixty," replied Jack.