merchant, amongst the vulgar I am called a dry-salter. I accumulated
wealth; with my fortune my family also grew, and one male Scropps, and
four female ditto, grace my board at least once in every week.

Passing over the minor gradations of my life, the removal from one
residence to another, the enlargement of this warehouse, the rebuilding
of that, the anxiety of a canvass for common council man, activity in
the company of which I am liveryman, inquests, and vestries, and ward
meetings, and all the other pleasing toils to which an active citizen is
subject, let us come at once to the first marked epoch of my life--the
year of my Shrievalty. The announcement of my nomination and election
filled Mrs. S. with delight; and when I took my children to Great Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, to look at the gay chariot brushing up for
me, I confess I felt proud and happy to be able to show my progeny the
arms of London, those of the Spectacle Makers' Company, and those of the
Scroppses (recently found at a trivial expense) all figuring upon the
same panels. They looked magnificent upon the pea-green ground, and the
wheels, "white picked out crimson," looked so chaste, and the
hammercloth, and the fringe, and the festoons, and the Scropps' crests
all looked so rich, and the silk linings and white tassels, and the
squabs and the yellow cushions and the crimson carpet looked so
comfortable, that, as I stood contemplating the equipage, I said to
myself, "What have I done to deserve _this_?--O that my poor father were
alive to see his boy Jack going down to Westminster, to chop sticks and
count hobnails, in a carriage like this!" My children were like mad
things: and in the afternoon, when I put on my first new brown court
suit (lined, like my chariot, with white silk) and fitted up with cut
steel buttons, just to try the effect, it all appeared like a dream; the
sword, which I tried on every night for half an hour after I went up to
bed, to practise walking with it, was very inconvenient at first; but