In this connection, here is a curiously complicated case of _alibi_, which I abstract _verbatim_ from one of my Archive-books.
"On Sunday, the 17th of September 1848, I was all the afternoon and evening at my house on Furze Hill, Brighton, quietly reading and teaching my children, &c.

Next day the 'Rev.J.C.

Richmond (an American friend) called with me on the Rev.Mr.Vaughan, and in the course of conversation the latter said to me in a good-natured tone of rebuke: 'Some of my congregation tell me they saw you yesterday afternoon smoking a cigar in a fly on the Marine Parade.' I had hardly time to deny the soft impeachment, which I might well have done with emphasis, as a loather of cigars, and as little as possible a traveller on Sundays, when Richmond broke out with 'That's impossible; for I saw him myself in Shoreham Church (five miles distant), and noticed that he went away in the middle of the sermon, as I supposed, to get home to Mrs.
Tupper.' Mr.Richmond says he could have made oath that I had been there, and that he told several persons after church that I 'had heard part of the sermon in the afternoon.' So, upon human and trustworthy evidence, I could have been proved to have been in three places at once." My fetch similarly once rescued a young lady from death on Snowdon: at least a stranger in company once came up to me, to thank me for my prowess in having stopped his daughter's pony, which had run away down, the mountain!--in vain I denied it:--and he addressed me by my name, too! Somebody must have given him my card by accident.
And let me here allude (if I can without indelicacy) to another sort of personation of more financial importance to myself.

Lately, I have seen some not very refined nor considerate paragraphs in American papers (Mr.
Bok, a Brooklyn editor, has told me that more than four hundred repeated them) to the effect that in the battle of life I had--truly enough--suffered reverses, and needed material help from my many professing friends.

Moreover I have heard it stated that some sort of collection was volunteered for me.