cry than wool in this rather adventurous solar voyage. By way of reassuring him, however, I mentioned my solid expectations of profit from the work I had just been engaged with; and how much more, then, from that of a trip to the sun!
I was tramp-tramping, along with the passing crowd one day, in deep musings over business things in general, and my own immediate profits and prospects in particular, when a voice fell of a sudden upon my ears, whose remembered notes, arousing a kind of instinctive awe, caused me in a moment to pull up, and to find that I had slid out of the marching rank. I was in a small business recess, and confronting me was no other than the lately redoubtable Bullings. My annoyance with my stupid self was excessive, and was anything but dissipated when the old fellow rushed upon me, with a warm handshaking, to acknowledge, as he vexatiously put it, my most kindly and considerate feeling, in thus, at his salute, purposely stopping to see him. He had been in the very act of drawing up some hams from their laboratorial cellarage, and he now pointed to these with a knowing wink, as though to say that we were brothers in trade now. But I fear I made no genial response, as I glanced at the raw new sawdusty-looking cheap ham rubbish lying before me. But he seemed in no mood to be discouraged, and, with the very best of spirits, entered warmly into all his new plans and prospects. He had already, as he told me, launched a grand restaurant system, for the supply of
