I have, however, been severely punished. I reclined on the steps where your constable found me, and immediately I sank into a slumber which, had it lasted for ever, would have afforded me a blissful immortality. Sweet visions of the past, retrospections of youthful joys, untainted by the errors and cares of the present, monopolised my imagination. A mother's lips were pressed to mine. A father's smile gladdened my heart. I had clasped a sister's hand, and a brother's arm encircled my neck. The home of my childhood arose before me, and the garden, with which my earliest recollections were associated, appeared in luxuriant, vernal beauty. The strong hand of your officer, firmly but not rudely applied, dispelled the delightful scene in which I was entranced, and recalled me to the sad reality of captivity and degradation. Have I not already suffered enough to justify the clemency which I implore?" The wretched man was cautioned and discharged. Having been brought before me on four successive mornings, I told him that I would not permit his coming so frequently, and that I adjudged him to pay a shilling, or to be confined for twenty-four hours. Thereupon he replied, "I regret, my dear Mr. Porter, that on this occasion you do not manifest your usual equanimity. I acknowledge my fault, but I am not worse to-day than I was yesterday or any of the previous days. Moreover, I must respectfully submit that you are greatly mistaken in your remarks as to my _coming_ so often. I never _came_ before you or any magistrate. I was always _brought_. If the police will leave me as they find me, I shall never complain of their want of attention, nor shall I ever intrude on your presence. Strike off that paltry shilling, and let me depart once more." I told the constable to remove the prisoner, upon which he exclaimed, "If you are obdurate, and insist on marking a penalty, put five shillings on the sheet. It will look more respectable, and there is just the same chance of its payment." Fisher continued a hopeless, persistent drunkard. With natural talents of no mean order, and with educational acquirements from which great and varied advantages might be expected, he lived despised and ridiculed, and afforded to those under whose occasional observation he came, a melancholy but certain proof that when a man's habits render him his own enemy, he becomes incapable of deriving any benefit from the friendship of others. On a winter's night in, I believe, 1856, Fisher betook himself to a limekiln in Luke Street. He lay down too near the edge and fell asleep, never to awake again in this world. Suffocated by the fumes of the kiln, his corpse, after an inquest and verdict of "accidental death," was consigned to a pauper's coffin, and was ultimately made a subject for anatomical demonstration. His fate was truly melancholy, but some salutary reflections may be derived from contemplating the final consequences of habitual and unrestrained intemperance. CHAPTER XV.