There are men whose especial delight it is to call your attention to their impaired condition, their threadbare coat, their patched shoes, their shabby equipage, or their sorry dwelling, as though they were framing a sort of indictment against Fate, and setting forth the hardships of persons of merit like them being subjected to this unjustifiable treatment by Fortune. “I suppose you never thought to see me reduced to this,” is the burden of their song; and it is very strange how, by mere repetition and insistence, these people establish for themselves a sort of position, and oblige the world to yield them a black-mail of respect and condolence. “This was not the sort of tipple I used to set before you once on a time, old fellow,” will be uttered by one of whose hospitalities you have never partaken. “It was another guess sort of beast I gave you for a mount when we met last,” will be said by a man who never rose above a cob pony; and one is obliged to yield a kind of polite assent to such balderdash, or stand forward as a public prosecutor and arraign the rascal for a humbug. In this self-commiseration Sewell was a master, and there was not a corner of the house he did not make the butt of his ridicule,--to contrast its littleness and vulgarity with the former ways and belongings of his own once splendor. “You're capital fellows,” said he to a party of officers from the neighboring garrison, “to come and see me in this dog-hole. Try and find a chair you can sit on, and I 'll ask my wife if we can give you some dinner. You remember me up at Rangoon, Hobbes? Another guess sort of place, wasn't it? I had the Rajah's palace and four elephants at my orders. At Guzerat, too, I was the Resident, and, by Jove, I never dreamed of coming down to this!” Too indolent or too indifferent to care where or how she was lodged, his wife gave no heed to his complaints, beyond a little half-supercilious smile as he uttered them. “If a fellow will marry, however, he deserves it all,” was his usual wind-up to all his lamentations; and in this he seemed to console himself by the double opportunity of pitying himself and insulting his wife. All that Colonel Cave and his officers could say in praise of the spot, its beauty, its neatness, and its comfort, were only fresh aliment to his depreciation, and he more than half implied that possibly the place was quite good enough for _them_, but that was not exactly the question at issue. Some men go through life permitted to say scores of things for which their neighbor would be irrevocably cut and excluded from society. Either that the world is amused at their bitterness, or that it is regarded as a malady, far worse to him who bears than to him who witnesses it,--whatever the reason,--people endure these men, and make even a sort of vicious pets of them. Sewell was of this order, and a fine specimen too.