The gates of the sporting world were thus finally closed against him, and thus was at least one source of profligate expenditure shut out. Though, however, he was free to ride or drive whithersoever he chose--and that, too, as became a man of fashion, in respect of appearance and equipment--he felt but a prisoner at large, and dependent entirely upon the will and pleasure of Mr. Gammon for his very means of subsistence. Most of his evenings were spent in such of the theatres as were open, while his nights were often passed amid scenes which were very strange ones indeed for a young widower to be seen in! Though he was a frequent visitor at Brookes', I must nevertheless do that respectable club the justice of saying, that its members were not very anxious for the presence or company of Mr. Titmouse. In fact, but for the continued countenance afforded to him, for reasons best known to that gentleman, by Mr. O'Gibbet, my friend would have been, some time before, unceremoniously expelled from the club, where he had made, certainly, one or two exceedingly disagreeable exhibitions. Liquor was made for fools to get drunk with, and so shorten their encumbering existence upon the earth; and as for Titmouse, I really do not think he ever went to bed completely sober; and he avowed, that "whenever he was alone, he felt so miserable;" and there was only one way, he said, which he knew of to "drive dull care away." Though aware of it in point of fact, Titmouse had neither sense nor sensibility enough to appreciate the fearful frailty of that tenure by which he held his present advantages of station--never reflecting that he was liable at any moment to be precipitated down from his elevation, into far deeper obscurity and poverty than he had ever emerged from! He had no power of enhancing his enjoyment of the present, either by vivid contrast with the past, or with the possible reverses of the future. A wealthy and profligate fool is by no means the enviable person he may appear to silly lookers-on; but what must he be when placed in the circumstances of Titmouse? He found town, at a dull season--the fall of the year to be sure--become daily duller, the sphere of his enjoyments having become so miserably contracted; and Mr. Gammon more and more stern and gloomy; in fact, Titmouse always dreaded to go near him, for he enjoined on Titmouse, whenever they met, a circumspection which was new and intolerable. He was refused admission at Lord Dreddlington's; the Duke of Tantallan's he dared not go near. When, in the Park, he met the earl's chariot--a dismal object indeed to him--driving slowly along--all in deep mourning--the place of Lady Cecilia occupied now by Miss Macspleuchan, and the shattered old white-haired man beside her, taking evidently no notice of anything about him; if Titmouse caught Miss Macspleuchan's eye, it was instantly removed, as from a disgusting object. He never met that carriage without a shudder, and a violent one, at thought of the