Say your money has been invested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless speculations--the news of the smash comes; you pay your outlying bills with the balance at the banker's; you assemble your family and make them a fine speech; the wife of your bosom goes round and embraces the sons and daughters seriatim; nestling in your own waistcoat finally, in possession of which, she says (with tender tears and fond quotations from Holy Writ, God bless her!), and of the darlings round about, lies all her worldly treasure: the weeping servants are dismissed, their wages paid in full, and with a present of prayer- and hymn-books from their mistress; your elegant house in Harley Street is to let, and you subside into lodgings in Pentonville, or Kensington, or Brompton.

How unlike the mansion where you paid taxes and distributed elegant hospitality for so many years! You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find yourself very tolerably comfortable.

I am not sure that in her heart your wife is not happier than in what she calls her happy days.

She will be somebody hereafter: she was nobody in Harley Street: that is, everybody else in her visiting-book, take the names all round, was as good as she.

They had the very same entrees, plated ware, men to wait, etc., at all the houses where you visited in the street.