An'
noo that ye've gane doon in the fire o' temptation, an' conquered, here's
your reward standin' ready. Special prawvidences!--wha can doot them? I ha'
had mony--miracles I might ca' them, to see how they cam' just when I was
gaun daft wi' despair."
And then he told me that the editor of a popular journal, of the Howitt
and Eliza Cook school, had called on me that morning, and promised me work
enough, and pay enough, to meet all present difficulties.
I did indeed accept the curious coincidence, if not as a reward for an act
of straightforwardness, in which I saw no merit, at least as proof that the
upper powers had not altogether forgotten me. I found both the editor and
his periodical, as I should have wished them, temperate and sunny--somewhat
clap-trap and sentimental, perhaps, and afraid of speaking out, as all
parties are, but still willing to allow my fancy free range in light
fictions, descriptions of foreign countries, scraps of showy rose-pink
morality and such like; which, though they had no more power against the
raging mass of crime, misery, and discontent, around, than a peacock's
feather against a three-decker, still were all genial, graceful, kindly,
humanizing, and soothed my discontented and impatient heart in the work of
composition.
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