say,--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and
exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, 'Mr. Peacock,
these are yours if you will only say what I have to see!'"

I laughed outright. May I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the
reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew
dark at the sound; he pushed back his plate and sighed.

"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who, I suppose, is
about your own age, he could tell you what a play is,--he could tell you
what life is. He has viewed the mantiers of the town; 'perused the
traders,' as the Swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?"

Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on
his lips,--

"Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has
strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama;
ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"

"A farce?" put in his comrade.

"No, a tragedy,--or comedy as Moliere wrote it."

"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the
tone of my contemporary.

"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend
here has no chance!"