"Alas, my reader with the pretended straight stick! thou pratest in vain to Hugh Clifford, the 'beggared gentleman!' I tell thee, plainly, thy stick is, like mine, a crooked one; nay, I tell thee, that every man's stick is but a crooked stick. And, of all curses under which this poor abused world groans, may it be speedily and effectually delivered, I pray, in my old age and in an alms-house, from the cant of the starched faces who assure their fellow-creatures with so much show of sanctity that their crooked sticks are straight ones! "Farewell, then, once again, my beloved but crooked friend, and thanks for thy faithfulness! alas, that I neglected to use thy silent admonitions as I ought to have used them, when the serpent who wrecked me was wont to shed his false tears while I related my tales of the poor in his ears! Fool that I was to take those tears, and the offers to lend more money that followed, for proofs of his feeling heart! Ah, my friend, had I to spend life again, I would attend more closely to thy monitions, and would not credit a man's professions of humanity, unless they cost him something! But it is too late to repent at what I fear I could not have avoided if I had even seen my error. "Let it pass! Hugh Clifford's heart danceth for joy, even amidst the squalor of an alms-house, that he can point to no inconsiderable portion of his life, and say with truth regarding it, as one said of old—'When the ear heard me, then it blessed me: and when the eye saw me it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.'— "Yet see I my image in thine, my dear faithful friend! my stick is but a crooked one, though I have done some little good in my life! Ostentation hath mixed itself, more or less, with my purest charities,—anger hath too often burned in my bosom till the morning light: I have not always 'done as I would be done by;' I have too often behaved contemptuously to my fellow-creatures, forgetting that I was but a poor, pitiful earth-worm, like themselves. I am but a _crooked_ stick, like thee, my beloved friend, with all my imagined excellency. "But, finally, I thank thee, that thou hast perseveringly shown me that I was not perfect: thou hast preserved me from self-deceit, or at least hast chased it away, when it hath led me into temporary captivity. "Farewell, then, my beloved crooked stick!—and if he who, first or last, readeth this my serious soliloquy feeleth inclined to laugh thereat, let him answer my question, when I ask him if _he_ be able to point to one human thing that hath been to him what thou hast been to me—_for fifty years, an ever-faithful and never-failing friend_?" THE NURTURE OF A YOUNG SAILOR; OR, THE HISTORY OF COCKLE TOM.