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not serve two interests. I cast in my lot, Alison, might transact the affairs of nations by means with yours." of guileless girls or conscientious curates.

I think I have omitted to state that Alderney had been requested by the partners to take the position of guardian or vice-guardian. He was, in fact, promoted to that post of dignity, vice Stephen Hamblin, cashiered, on the strength of which he gave himself airs of importance in the Birch-Tree Tavern. He slept at the house: in the morning, such was his zeal, he rose at six, breakfasted early, and set off on his quest among the London parish-registries, both official and ecclesiastical. He carried a big pocket-book with a pencil in readiness to make entries, should any bearing on the subject be found. But for some time nothing at all was discovered in London churches.

He returned to Clapham about half-past six or seven, and dined with the ladies. He cheered the banquet by anecdotes of his past experiences, revealed a new world-a series of new worlds, to Alison, by describing how he had rowed, played cricket, sung songs at supper, and otherwise distinguished himself at Cambridge; how, with Stephen, he once staid for six months in the Quartier Latin of Paris; how he had sojourned, by himself, among the students of Heidelberg; how he had lost his little fortune and mortgaged half his little income to pay off his creditors, and how he had become a person of great distinction in the world of finance.

It was all wonderful: the contemplation, at second hand, of life under so many new aspects distracted Alison, and turned her thoughts from her present anxieties. Alderney, too, had a powerful imagination; his stories were touched with that light which is neither of heaven nor of earth, of unreality desirable and beautiful, which only a man with some touch of genius knows how to infuse: and he understood how to place himself as the central figure in the group.

About one or two things she was uncertain. It was not clear when her cousin could find the time to become the profound scholar which he loved to represent himself; nor was it quite apparent to her that the real objects and aims of the Universities of Cambridge, Heidelberg, and Paris were best arrived at by such a life as he described as common among the students. Finally, she could not understand that it was altogether right to promote the establishment of companies whose only object seemed to be to enable their founders to sell out when the shares were high, and then to collapse. But Alderney assured her that she could not comprehend financial morality. It resembled, he said, diplomacy; every one knew that if diplomacy were to be stripped of brag, bounce, lies, and pretense, the trade of diplomatists would be gone, and we

As for Nicolas, he utilized the presence of so great a scholar for his own purposes: he read novels, in fact, while Alderney Codd wrote his exercises for him.

"Your Latin subjunctive moods," said the boy, "are sound; but your French past participles are shaky. If you go on living here till the end of the half, I shall have a shy at the Latin verse prize. Now, then - exercise forty-three. On the oblique narrative. Here's Balbus again -no getting rid of that chap anyhow."

CHAPTER XX.

HOW YOUNG NICK SPENT HIS HALF-HOLIDAY.

ON a warm and pleasant morning in May, about a week after the Hamblin case was heard in court, the boys of the Clapham GrammarSchool came flocking from the class-rooms as the clock struck twelve. After the nature of boys they ran, jumped, shouted, and laughed. One among them all neither ran, nor jumped, nor shouted. He only walked. And he was a boy with white hair and pink eyes. He dug his hands into his pockets, wore his hat a little tilted over his forehead, which conveys the idea of a thoughtful nature, and calmly surveyed the mob of contemporaries with the eye of a philosopher. Young Nick, in fact, was not a clubbable boy. He went his own way. Nobody ever saw him in a cricket-field, nor was he ever in the "worry" of a foot-ball match. If he saw a game of cricket going on upon Clapham Common, he gave the players a wide berth: the Common was broad enough for him and them. If he saw the foot-ball come bounding over the rough surface in his direction, he retired, laterally, so as to avoid the crowd which came after it. The common gauds which delight boyhood gave no joy to Nicolas. The silver cups, offered for competition at athletics, he valued at their weight in silver, and no more. This was not much, and so he rarely entered his own name in any trial of skill, strength, or speed. Yet, after the sports were over, he might have been observed, had he been watched, going through every one of the events by himself, one after the other, and making careful comparisons of his own results with those obtained by the winners. If he held aloof from his schoolfellows out of hours, in school he was still more self-contained. Nothing moved him, no spirit of emulation possessed him; he never cared to be high in his form, nor was he depressed if his place was low. He was abso

lutely unmoved by any of the exhortations, incitements, or satiric remarks of his masters. He neither took nor pretended to take the smallest interest in the routine school-work, and he valued a prize, as he valued a silver cup, at exactly the sum it cost at the bookseller's.

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Greek!" he would say contemptuously. 'What is the use of Greek in the City? Who wants Greek in the army? Greek is invented for schoolmasters to pretend to be able to read it. Catch them reading Greek when no one's looking, and for their own pleasure. Yah! They can't do it. Latin again. Do the partners in the great City houses write Latin verses? Do they grind out exercises in the subjunctive mood? Do they make their clerks say the irregular verbs and the rules of syntax every morning? Gammon!"

Euclid was another branch of education for which he entertained the most profound contempt, holding that the City required no geometry of a young man. But arithmetic, writing, drawing, French, German, and geography, were subjects which he plainly saw to have a solid commercial value, and he worked at them with zeal and vigor; so much so, indeed, that on more than one occasion he found himself presented with a prize for proficiency in these branches.

There were other things, not generally taught in schools, at which this remarkable youth worked hard, in those hours when his comrades were running wild about the Common. He had conceived the very just idea that deportment, manners, ease in society, and a good tone, were of more use to a young man in the City than anywhere else. Accordingly, he had begged Alison to consider him as her pupil, and in these departments he became voluntarily subject to her as his mistress. He could be, and frequently was, as we have already seen, as vulgar a boy as ever walked. Yet the lessons had their effect, and the boy's slang was only affected, just as other boys' fine manners are put on for the occasion.

He was a handy boy, too, and practiced small arts. He had a lathe with which he could make all sorts of things; and he could carve in wood; and he could execute fretwork; and he could take a watch to pieces, and once nearly succeeded in putting it together again. And he worked steadily at short-hand, always with the view of becoming more useful in the City. In short, he intended to present himself, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, as an accomplished young clerk, ready for any kind of work-the perfect clerk, whose undoubted destiny is a partnership. I believe it was Socrates who first explained how useful and excellent a thing it is that a man should resolve on perfection in his own line, so that if he be a carpenter he will be the best possible car

penter, and if a statesman the best possible statesman, and so forth. It is by such men that success is achieved: such a carpenter, Socrates pointed out, wins the wreath of carpentering, which is made of shavings.

In addition to these virtues of resolution and industry, young Nick possessed that of silence; no one ever suspected him of serious intentions, except Alison, who watched him, gave him advice, and to whom he confided in a way his projects and his scheme for the conduct of life.

This reduction of education to its practical uses was not without effect upon the boys with whom young Nick worked. They were all boys connected with the City; they all-except one every year, who took the annual scholarship and went up to Oxford or Cambridge-looked to the City as the scene of their future labors and triumphs: they were all taught at home to regard "business" as the noblest profession, because it brings in most money: the clever boy who carried off the prizes, became captain of the school, went up to Cambridge and distinguished himself, was regarded with a sort of pity, because the City would be closed to him. He might take a good degree: he might achieve greatness as a preacher or a lawyer or a writer; but, poor beggar! he would never have any money.

So that young Nick's teaching fell upon rich soil, and took root and flourished. Yet, as always happens, there were none, except himself, who advanced beyond the grumbling stage, and struck out a practical line for himself.

A boy so singular in appearance, so original in his manner of regarding life and its duties, so self-contained, and with that ingeniously mischievous leaning to which attention has been already drawn, was, of course, a noticeable feature in the school. At prize-giving days it pleased the boy to overhear other boys whispering to their sisters: "That's young Nick; there he is, with the white hair."

On this particular morning he first looked up into the sky and observed that the day was bright; then he felt in his pocket and found that the eighteen pence which constituted all his wealth was safe in the corner, in three sixpences. Then he reflected gravely:

"I did tell the old lady that I might have business at Anthony Hamblin and Company. She won't mind if I don't go home for dinner. and it's only cold roast beef, and eighteen pence will get me a good deal better dinner than cold roast beef. Then where am I to get the next eighteen pence? Uncle Anthony, we all miss you. Eighteen pence-well, I can walk in, and if the money runs to it, I can get back on a 'bus."

For an active boy of thirteen, a walk from Clapham to London Bridge is not far, and it is

full of interest. First the way lies along a broad and open road, with substantial villas on either side as old as the great houses in the gardens round the Common; there is a nonconformist church with pillars and pediment almost as magnificent as anything that Athens could ever show; there is the Swan, a roadside public-house with its water-trough in front, and always carts of hay standing about, thirsty horses drinking, drivers talking and passing round the frequent pewter, stable-boys dawdling about, so that the place presents somewhat of the rusticity which it boasted fifty years ago when first it was founded. Presently you pass what was once the village of Stockwell, where there was a famous, but not at all a fearful, ghost. Then begin shops. Then another stretch of road with terraces, but no longer great gardens, and some of the terraces are dingy; then more shops; then Kennington Church, ugly, and yet venerable by reason of its vast churchyard, where lie the bones of so many thousand citizens. To young Nick, the church was a sort of half-way house. Besides, there was a clock in the tower. Beyond the church is the park, as large as my lady's pocket-handkerchief, ornamented with a lodge which does infinite credit to its architect-the late Prince Consort. After the park, the Horns Tavern, regarded by boys from Clapham as the real frontier-post of Town, and then shops, more shops, and yet more shops.

"Why," asked young Nick, "don't they knock them all into one mighty great shop, and then take turns to keep it, so that they would have six days' holiday out of the seven, at least?"

The question was asked some little time ago, but no practical answer has yet been given, and I think there are still about as many shops as

ever.

Arrived at the Horns, young Nick trudged on with lighter step. He was about to enter the golden ground-Tom Tidler's ground, where one day he too would be enabled to stoop and gather the yellow nuggets. His white hair, white eyebrows, and pink complexion made the people turn and stare at him. That he did not mind. It was a kind of tribute to his greatness; personal merit, he argued to himself, made him an albino. He only held his head higher, and walked with more assurance. The meanness of the shops in Newington Causeway affected him painfully. Trade ought to be majestic, he thought. Presently the sight of an immense block of buildings overshadowing the Tabernacle cheered him. It was consecrated to the cordwaining mystery. "There is Money," said young Nick, "in Boots."

Presently he came to London Bridge. Here he halted, to lean over the low parapet, and gaze

down the river upon the forest of masts in the Pool, the steamers threading their way up and down the tortuous highway of the river, which was by no means silent, but exasperatingly noisy, with the bells, the whistles, the steam escapes of the boats, and the oaths of the 'longshore-men, who, all of them three fourths drunk, were taking the empty ships down the river, from London Port to Leith.

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They bring their cargoes," said young Nick thoughtfully, "to the Docks. There is indigo, and cochineal, and dates, and figs, and silk, and tea, and coffee, and corn, and brandy, and palmbutter, and all sorts, such as ostrich-feathers, and elephants' tusks, and porpoise-skins, and bacon, and cheese, and apples. They come from all the corners of the world. They unload at the Docks; and then we, the merchants of London, begin to make our money out of the cargoes. Aha! That is where the fun begins. The niggers toil and moil, growing the stuff, and weeding it, and picking it, getting horribly licked with rattancanes all the while-ho! ho! then the sailors stow it away, and bring it home, going up aloft in all weathers, tumbling overboard, and getting drowned-ha! ha! then the dock-laborers, at eighteen pence a day-ha! ha! ho! ho!—-put it ashore in the docks; and then our turn comes. What a beautiful thing it is to be a British merchant, and in the City of London! We sit at our ease before our desks; our travelers go about for us among the retail traders getting orders; the clerks receive them; we have got just nothing to do, except to divide the profits. Oh, what a pity, what a thousand pities, that poor Uncle Anthony got drowned before I was old enough to go into the House!"

Perhaps some incident in morning school had irritated him, for he went on:

"Bah! As if the subjunctive mood would ever help a man to a partnership! Balbus feared that it was all up with the army, did he? Then what a white-livered, cowardly sneak Balbus must have been! I hope he was with the army, and it was all up with him! But one never knows what became of Balbus, because he always turns up again, and always pretending to smile, and always funking something. Certainly Balbus must have been a great humbug, and I am quite sure that he got into such an Almighty Funk at last, that he forgot all about his tenses and moods, mixed up the subjunctive and the indicative, and used the imperfect for the present."

More he would have meditated, but that he looked round and perceived that he was the object of earnest contemplation on the part of an old lady, apparently of failing eyesight, because she held a pair of glasses close to her eyes. She was gazing on his white hair, and certainly either

did not see, or could not understand the jacket. And she thought he was meditating suicide.

“Aged man!” she murmured, in impassioned accents, "do not, do not, I entreat you, destroy your life!"

disposed; to pay your money, exchanging the compliments of the season with the young lady (of more severe aspect) who takes the money at the door, help yourself to a toothpick, and stroll with dignity down the street in the direction of

"O Lord!" cried young Nick, "here's a pre- the workshop, quickening gradually as you apcious game!"

He was in one of those embrasures, retreats, upon London Bridge, where one can sit breezily and contemplate the passing crowd, or the argosies of the Port.

"Here's a game!" he cried. Regardless of the small crowd which gathered round in a moment, he amazed the poor old lady, who was feeling in her bag for a tract, by executing before her a pas seul, a reminiscence of a hornpipe, with an agility and grace surprising in one so old. While she was still staring aghast, he had finished, and, descending from the little semicircle, he squared his elbows and pushed through the mob which had gathered round, with a goodhumored "Now, then, can't you let a man pass?"

It will be seen that young Nick already understood the true art of making points. You must be unexpected, brisk, confident, and brief. Before the old lady had half realized that the snowy locks belonged to a boy and not an old man at all, and before the crowd had half understood the full humor of the situation, which they would take home and gradually evolve, the hero of it was gone, vanished in the crowd, never more to be seen by the greater part.

The boy, greatly rejoicing at the discomfiture of the old lady, proceeded on his walk. He first repaired to the central office at Great St. Simon Apostle. He knew all the clerks in the place, and they all knew that his first ambition was to have a desk among them. His last ambition, Nick kept to himself. He had purposed, as part of to-day's amusement, dining in company with some of his friends among the junior clerks. Everybody in the house, indeed, regarded the boy as one of themselves. For him it was splendid to sit among the diners at Crosby Hall, to call grandly for what he chose from the list, to ask for a half-pint of old and bitter, mixed, boiled beef, "underdone, Lizzie, and not too much fat," with carrots, potatoes, and new bread; to have the dinner served up in hot plates, each with its tin cover, brought in a delightful pile; to inquire tenderly, just like a regular clerk, after Lizzie's health and spirits that morning, and to congratulate the young lady on her looks; to consider the question of collegepudding or cheese, and to feel that the day must be marked by the exhibition of the former; to ask for the bill, to dally with the half-pint as if it were a decanter of sherry, and as if you were not pressed for time, oh! dear no, not at all, and could get back to the office whenever you felt so

proached the portals, and entering briskly and with the appearance of zeal. All this was a very delightful change after the irresponsible meals at home. It made young Nick feel as if he were already a clerk in the office, already had a desk of his own, already had placed his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder up which he meant to climb until he stood in the dizziest heights with Augustus the great and William the Silent. That, however, was in the far distance. For the present, he envied every one in the firm, from the office-boy at five shillings a week, to the senior clerks and managers of departments.

To-day, to the boy's disappointment, it was already half-past one when he got to Great St. Simon Apostle, and the young clerks, his friends, were dispersed, multivious, in quest of food.

So he resolved to dine by himself, and rambled about the office, from one room to another, trying the stools, and wondering which were the most comfortable desks. When he had finished a hasty inspection of the clerks' room, he made his way up stairs. These were the rooms of the senior clerks and of the partners: "Mr. Augustus Hamblin" on one door; "Mr. William Hamblin" on another door; and, alas! on another the name of Mr. Anthony Hamblin.

Young Nick sorrowfully turned the handle, and peeped in. No one was there, and he entered the room, softly closing the door behind him. Everything was just as Anthony had left it, except that the safe stood open, with all the papers taken out. The chair before the table; the table itself; an office-coat hanging behind the door; the cupboard where the sherry and biscuits were kept, with a box or two of cigars; the big screen in the corner; the grimy, windows; the wax-candles; the great plated inkstand; the massive pad of blotting-paper—all reminded the boy of his uncle.

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"Oh, Uncle Anthony!" he said, for the second time that day, sitting in the dead man's chair, "what a pity, what a thousand pities, that you were drowned before I was old enough to come into the House! But I will get in somehow; and, before all is done, I will sit in this chair as a partner. See if I don't!"

There was something uncanny about this empty room, full of associations; and the boy quickly left it, shutting the door very softly behind him. He did not dare to visit the partners' rooms, nor those of the chief clerks; and, after a little exchange of facetia with the porters, he

left the house, and turned his face in a southeasterly direction, which led him, by way of Gracechurch Street and Eastcheap, to Tower Hill. He had forgotten that he was hungry, and was making in the direction of the place he loved next best to Great St. Simon Apostle, the Docks.

Tower Hill always pleased him mightily. There are great warehouses there, with cranes, wagons, and other signs of business; there is the Mint, always engaged in manufacturing sovereigns for the reward of successful merchants; there is the Trinity House, which keeps an everwatchful eye over the safety of the mercantile marine. There are, as many people know, other associations connected with Tower Hill. Young Nick had read about some of these, or, rather, had learned about them in history lessons; but they did not stick, any more than the Latin subjunctive. He had no leanings toward historical associations. He was not, like some among us, haunted by the ghost of the past. Not at all. He looked at the White Tower, on which the sun was shining splendidly, as it has shone for eight hundred years, and murmured: "What a beautiful place for the head offices of the House! and plenty of room all about for our own warehouses." But then he would have gazed upon the walls of the Holy City itself without emotion.

He went on, turning to the right, and came upon the usual little crowd of merchant sailors, standing about on the pavement opposite the Board of Trade Office, waiting to be hired. They are a curious body of men, these mercantile Jacks. They lack the independence and careless ease of their brethren of the Royal Navy. They are not clean like them; nor do they take a pride in the smartness of their dress; nor are they conspicuous for the appearance of physical activity. They are not spry; they have no joviality; their cheeks are mostly bloated with bad liquor; their eyes are dull; their gait is heavy; their attire is a mixture of sea-going and shoregoing togs; their hands are in their pockets; they look ashamed of themselves. They seem to say: "Behold us, you who have neglected us, and left us to be the prey of greedy ship-owners and piratical crimps. See what we are, the descendants of the gallant heroes who sailed Westward-ho! with Raleigh, and Drake, and Hawkins. Around us are the land-sharks who plunder us, the black-eyed sirens-most all of them have one black eye at least-who destroy us, the office where we sign articles which enslave us. Beyond us are the craft which take us to our doom-ill-found, ill-rigged, the cheating venture of a cheating shipper. On board them we are fed with rancid pork and weevily biscuit. There are not enough of us to navigate her even in

smooth seas. We are knocked down by mate or skipper with anything handy, a rope's end or a marline-spike. On board there is no safety, nor respite of work, nor any comfortable thing at all. On shore there is the madness of rioting and drink, which is the only joy we know. We are for ever on the frying-pan or in the fire. Your navy-men you watch over. For them you have chaplains, doctors, schools, homes, societies, and pensions. You forbid their officers to ill-treat them; you provide them with good and abundant food; you train them, educate them, and you find your ships well. But for us you do nothing; and we all reel, blind, and deaf, and careless, and uncared for, into the abyss."

They did not speak so, however, to young Nick, who regarded them with enthusiasm. "Splendid fellows!" he said.

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They don't mind how much hard work they do. They don't mind how bad the weather is, nor how cold. They like to feel that they are bringing money— heaps of money-home to the partners of the great City firms, making them richer every day. I couldn't feel like that, myself. But then I'm not a sailor."

Then he came to the gates of St. Katharine's Docks.

Cerberus, in shape of three policemen, stands at those gates: young Nick, whom the three knew perfectly well, and all about him, always made a point at these gates of going through a little comedy of intrigue. He pulled a leather book from his jacket-pocket, extracted, standing without the gates, a couple of documents which were in reality Latin exercises, examined them with great care, pulled his hat over his eyes, and marched through the portals with the air of one who has important business, not to be delayed a moment, in connection with dock warrants. He assumed, in fact, the character of a junior clerk. He did not for a moment deceive the policemen, who knew that he was in some way connected with the family of Hamblin, the great indigomerchants, and that he was only here to prowl round and look about him. It is against the rules to admit any one except on business, but this boy was an exception. Besides, on this occasion, when he came out again they had their revenge.

Once within the Docks the boy can go where he likes undisturbed. There are the great ships in the basin, some unloading with the aid of mighty derricks and steam-cranes, and a great "yeo heave oh!" and a running of chains and a dropping of ropes and a deft stowing in their places on the wharfs of cases, casks, bags, and boxes, while the busy feet trample and the boatswains whistle, and the laden men run backward and forward as if they were merry-making, in

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