to hang himself. Now you will notice, my dear friend, that he did not
lose his dignity, until, with true British instinct, they took away his
cash, and even opened his letters to confiscate his remittances. He
should have hidden the imperial spoons in a secret pocket. He should,
at least, have saved a sixpence wherewithal to buy Mr. Alison.

You may think, dear Don, that my views are exceedingly sordid. I
readily admit that all the philosophy and poetry, and I suppose I must
add the morality, of the world are against me. I know that it is
prettier to turn up one's nose at ready cash. I have not found, indeed,
that for the poetical pauper, in his proper person, the world, whether
sentimental or stolid, has any deep reverence. Will old Jacob Plum, who
lives on an unapproachably high avenue,--his house front and his heart
of the same material,--and who made two mints of money in the patent
_poudrette_, come to my shabby little attic in Nassau Street, and ask
me to dinner simply because "The Samos (Ill.) Aristarchean" has spoken
with condescending blandness of my poems? I know that Miss Plum dotes
upon my productions. I know that she pictures me to herself as a
Corydon in sky-blue smalls and broad-brimmed straw hat, playing elegies
in five flats, or driving the silly sheep home through the evening
shades. Now, whatever else I may be, I am not that. I keep my
refinement for gala-days; I do not shave, because I would save
sixpences; I do not wear purple and fine linen. I should be a woful
disappointment to Mistress Plum: for I like beer with my beef, and a
heart-easing tug at my pipe afterwards; and as for the album, we should
never get along at all, for I have too much respect for poetry to write
it for nothing. But if I have not wholly escaped the shiftlessness and
improvidence of my vocation,--if I have never rightly comprehended the
noble maxim, "A penny saved is a penny gained," (which cannot in rigid
mathesis be true, because by saving the penny you miss the enjoyment: