These blessed days
have long since gone by--at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian
angel was either wofully ignorant of metallurgy, or the stores had been
surreptitiously ransacked; and as to the other expedient, I frankly
confess I should have liked some better security for its result than the
precedent of the "Heir of Lynn."
It is a great consolation, amid all the evils of life, to know that,
however bad your circumstances may be, there is always somebody else
in nearly the same predicament. My chosen friend and ally, Bob
M'Corkindale, was equally hard up with myself, and, if possible, more
averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man--that is, in
a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam
Smith, and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies
of the "Wealth of Nations." The result was a crude farrago of notions
regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and
relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring
audience at "The Crow"; for Bob was by no means--in the literal
acceptation of the word--a dry philosopher.
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