The boon was readily granted,--for Diggory's mother, having never been separated from her child before, had wept every day since she parted with him. The very next month, Dig's father gave up the notion of making him into a gentleman,--for the bobbin-net speculation waned,--and there was an end to making an immense fortune in a twinkling. He embarked the little capital he had gained in the more staple manufacture of the town, took Diggory into the trade, and associating with plain, sensible men, and cultivating knowledge in his leisure hours, Diggory Lawson was happier every day, and was no longer "the lad who felt like a fish out of water." THE INTELLECTUAL LEVER THAT LACKED A FULCRUM. Mr. Mortimer had suddenly inherited an estate of something more than five hundred a year, by the death of an uncle, and was persuaded by his Whig acquaintances in the metropolis, since he had just jumped into "a qualification," to set himself in earnest about getting into Parliament: for a seat then, when Lord Melbourne's premiership seemed to be held by a very frail tenure, might--his cockney friends entreated him to remember--enable him to "_save_ the country" for, at least, another year, from the "merciless grasp" of the Tories. So Mr. Mortimer set his wits to work, to find out how the seat was to be gained. He hunted for opinions wherever he went; but none "took his fancy" so much as a shrewd hour's advice given him one day, without a fee, by a lawyer, or a person who said he was one, and with whom he fell into conversation on board one of the Richmond steamers. "Start a newspaper, sir; that's your only sure card, for cheapness," said the earnest talking man who called himself "a solicitor:" "the press gives a man a power that is irresistible." Mr. Mortimer was struck with the words, and wondered that he had never, by his own unassisted thought, alighted on so "tangibly-intelligent an idea," as he inwardly and emphatically termed it. But the "legal gentleman's" next words made him feel still more confident that he was talking to a man who was worth listening to:--a solid matter-of-fact man, and not a mere fanciful idealist:--one who surveyed his ground before he either trod upon it himself, or recommended others to set their feet upon it.