which our Polly had prepared as usual—my wife, however, permitting such extravagance only when we used Cork seconds. Another minute, and I was exhorting young Brown—who, however, was too preoccupied with Polly to pay much heed—to make a good meal, as we were both to take the early morning train to Birmingham, in order to begin, sad to say, all over again, the business tour in the hardware trade.
And now, in conclusion, it's all very well to profess to take composedly what comes to us, whether the up or the down, the great or the small. But I cannot say I was, all at once, quite reconciled to such equanimity after two successive tumbles from those lofty heights over which I had seemed, for a whole lifetime, to be so successfully careering.
I was thus brooding through our tea-taking, and in a decidedly grumbling humour, when a thought suddenly flashed upon me. That projected publication, which was in fact the backbone of all I had just experienced, might still prove a surviving reality. I would write out a full, true, and particular account of everything just as I saw it and felt it in my late experiences. And then again, whatever the proceeds, whether great or small, there was at any rate one grand consolation, that not one iota of the profit, not the cent of an Energy of it all, could be claimed by Brown.
Good reader, I have now duly done all this, and I hope you have enjoyed the resulting volume, as indeed you have a right to do after paying your purchase money. I don't pretend, with worthy old Brown in his momentary higher mood, to say
