I have called this chapter "cutting weather," partly in compliment to the month of February, and partly in respect of my own misfortunes which you are going to read about, for I have often thought that January (which is mostly twelfth cake and holiday time) is like the first four or five years of a little boy's life; then comes dismal February, and the working days with it, when chaps begin to look out for themselves, after the Christmas and the New Year's hey-day and merry-making are over, which our infancy may well be said to be. Well can I recollect that bitter first of February, when I first launched out into the world and appeared at Dr. Swishtail's academy. I began at school that life of prudence and economy, which I have carried on ever since. My mother gave me eighteen-pence on setting out (poor soul! I thought her heart would break as she kissed me, and bade God bless me); and besides, I had a small capital of my own, which I had amassed for a year previous. I'll tell you what I used to do. Wherever I saw six half-pence I took one. If it was asked for, I said I had taken it, and gave it back;—if it was not missed, I said nothing about it, as why should I?—those who don't miss their money don't lose their money. So I had a little private fortune of three shillings, besides mother's eighteen-pence. At school they called me the copper-merchant, I had such lots of it. Now, even at a preparatory school, a well-regulated boy may better himself: and I can tell you I did. I never was in any quarrels: I never was very high in the class or very low; but there was no chap so much respected: and why? _I'd always money._ The other boys spent all their's in the first day or two, and they gave me plenty of cakes and barley-sugar then, I can tell you. I'd no need to spend my own money, for they would insist upon treating me. Well, in a week, when their's was gone, and they had but their threepence a week to look to for the rest of the half-year, what did I do? Why, I am proud to say that three-halfpence out of the threepence a week of almost all the young gentlemen at Dr. Swishtail's, came into my pocket. Suppose, for instance, Tom Hicks wanted a slice of gingerbread, who had the money? Little Bob Stubbs to be sure. "Hicks," I used to say, "_I'll_ buy you three-halfp'orth of gingerbread, if you'll give me threepence next Saturday:" and he agreed, and next Saturday came, and he very often could not pay me more than three-halfpence, then there was the threepence I was to have _the next_ Saturday. I'll tell you what I did for a whole half-year:—I lent a chap by the name of Dick Bunting three-halfpence the first Saturday, for threepence the next; he could not pay me more than half when Saturday came, and I'm blest if I did not make him pay me three-halfpence _for three and twenty weeks running_, making two shillings and tenpence-halfpenny. But he was a sad dishonourable fellow, Dick Bunting; for, after I'd been so kind to him,