"And then, as to my inner man, good lack, my beloved crooked crab-stick! though thou remainest the same, how is this my inner man changed! ay, how hath it changed and changed again, since our first dear friendship was formed! Yet I said in my heart, once, that my mind could never change in its regard for what I was pleased to call 'certain great principles!' Alack! I have lived to feel uncertain about the certainty and greatness of almost all principles! and—— "But stop! how is this, that having taken thee into my hand, I begin, just now, to question the reality of thy crookedness? Art thou really so very, very crooked, my dearly beloved stick? "There! I place thee, again, in thy own corner, that so thou mayst lean against thy own spot in the wall, and lo! thy crookedness is made, once more, fully manifest! No, no, my friend—for Hugh Clifford loves thee too well and sincerely to call himself thy 'master,' and think of thee as of a slave!—no, no, it is too late in life for the 'beggared gentleman' to deceive himself—thou _art_ crooked, crooked indeed! "But ah! my beloved stick, it is for thy crookedness I love thee, above all, though not for it alone. I avow to thee, as I have often avowed, in times past, when no human ear heard me, that I thank thee, my faithful, crooked, unfailing friend, for all thy service. Twice, when wielded by my right arm, didst though enable me to deliver a weak fellow-creature from his stronger, who would have slain him because he had not filthy gold or silver to satisfy the robber: ten times didst thou empower me to wrest open the cottage doors of dying human beings deserted by their kind, and unable to arise and welcome their deliverer: nay, once didst thou enable me to preserve my own poor life when the plunderer who now possesseth my house and land would have secretly and bloodily taken it! "What though it bringeth some sorrow to remember the angelic face and form I saw, for the last time, but an hour before I cut thee from thy parent tree, Ah! how well doth life assort the lot of its inheritors, even when they most deeply repine! The sea devoured my Mary—my beauty, my only love, and I repined that she was not spared to share my riches and possessions; alas! would she not have had to share my lot, also, in this alms-house? Indeed, my friend, I was blessed that I gained thy friendship that night, when my love was taken from me, for how great a comfort hast thou been to me!