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"Then, my dear companion and thirty years' friend, you have forgiven her, but your brother?"

"I have forgotten him," answered Dodypol. "Forgiven him?" suggested his friend.

"Forgotten him!" persisted the other, warmly.

"You remember what I said," observed Rawlings, sighing; "my romance was to leave you a better or a worse man.

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"Tell me how you got at this history," said Dodypol, evading the other's inference; "only two parties-those of whom you spoke-were fully in possession, besides myself, of that sad secret. I, by suffering, was too well acquainted with it-they, at least one of them, by guilt,-the other I believe to be innocent in the main, as I hope to be a saved man. Forty-six years ago, and no one has unsealed the record, till your lips did the office.

"You must not blame me," said Rawlings; "though in getting possession of a secret, which in our thirty years of friendly intercourse you did not think fit to entrust me with, I seem to have done you a wrong."

"No more on that head, my friend," said Dodypol; “but about my brother-you must have seen him. Is he alive-in England?"

"He is. In the fog yesterday-here is the romance of my narrative, you took possession of his desk."

"I am incredulous," exclaimed Dodypol, in blank amazement. "What I tell you,' averred his companion, "is sacred fact.

You walked into the office of Barker's firm-Barker of Ironmonger-lane, you know-and were mistaken by the clerk for your brother, who has had a stool there for ten years past, and has dwelt in London the whole of that time."

"And we have never, by accident, stumbled on each other's path!"

66

Your brother was, this day, to have joined Barker's firm." "Ah," cried Dodypol, "I remember something that puzzled me. He is then taken into partnership?"

"He was to have been-but is not. So suddenly come reverses about-that, with the brightest hopes yesterday, he is to-day a ruined man. He went, as you know, after the wrong he did you, to America, where he remained for years, and amassed much money. With this money, on his return to this country, he purchased landed property, which appears to have been fraudulently sold him. He had not been long in possession, before another

claimed it, whose right was also disputed by a third. In the course of litigation, it was made a Chancery affair. Your brother deriving no present benefit from his purchase, and having but a dismal prospect for the future, in the law's vexatious delay, sought employment, and became a clerk at Barker's. Only very recently has the long procrastinated suit been brought to an issue-when it terminated, to all seeming, in his favour, and he received an invitation from Barker's firm, to become a partner of the house, on being prepared with the necessary funds. The ceremony such as it is was to have taken place to-day. Yesterday afternoon he received intelligence of a reversal of judgment. That is not all; his share of the costs are sufficiently heavy to ensure his ending his days in a prison.

Dodypol moved uneasily in his chair, and groaned.

"After giving up all he is worth, including his ten years' savings at Barker's," proceeded Rawlings, "there will remain just five hundred pounds for him to pay, and he will not possess five hundred pence.

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"He will. I have more than that sum, accumulated in my savings of thirty years. For God's sake, go and tell him so, if you know where to find him, and set his mind at ease," cried Dodypol, speaking very loud and with great volubility.

"What-tell him that you will pay the five hundred pounds ?" Rawlings almost screamed, rising from his chair.

"To be sure I will. My own twin-brother, grievous as was the wrong he did me-sha'n't go to gaol for debt, while I have a penny that will be of use to him," replied Dodypol, beginning to weepgrey-headed as he was-like a very young child.

"Better-better-better-I said better" cried his fellow clerk, flinging his arm around him.

"I forgive him if he is in trouble," sobbed Dodypol.

"As we forgive those that trespass against us," said Rawlings, sinking back into his seat, and musing on the Christian's model prayer.

"But tell me-for I am yet all at sea on one point-how you found him out ?-or how he found you out?" inquired Dodypol,

ten minutes afterwards.

"Why, it occurred in this manner," replied Rawlings. "On going to the office this morning, to tell Barker of the altered aspect of his affairs, he was thrown into a state of mystification as com

plete as your own.

Reference was made to a bruised nose which he exhibited on the previous afternoon, the result of a personal contact with a lamp-post during the fray, and which had so marvellously recovered in the past night, as to present no symptom of contusion. His wit was quicker than yours. When he had gained all the intelligence to be arrived at respecting the individual who, suddenly appearing in his shoes, as it were, had been mistaken for himself, owing to a particular resemblance, and from his answering to the same name, he asked himself if it could be his twin brother, whom he had so cruelly wronged in early life-whom he had not seen for forty-six years,-of whom he had ever since lost all traces? Could it be? Had possibility no limit? He entered immediately upon the work of inquiry. Proceeding from one office to another, without question as to the nature of the business transacted there, he at length, just as I was going to my dinner, encountered me at the threshold of our office, and made the demand of me- -Was I acquainted with a party-elderly-just his own age, he said,very like him-bearing the name of Dodypol. I replied that I Had I known him long? For thirty years. Good luck be my blessing. Would I accompany him? would I listen to him? would I be his intercessor with you? would I prepare you for a meeting? There, you can imagine all the rest, as well as I can tell you."

was.

"The more I reflect upon this strange adventure," said Dodypol, "the more I wonder-what can be at the bottom of it?

"PROVIDENCE is at the head of it," answered Rawlings. "I believe in Providence. I don't spout about it, like those fellows who make a trade of religion, but I can see clearly that Heaven had one end of a chain yesterday, of which the fog and other casualties supplied the links, and that you, by wise ordination, laid hold of the other end. And now let us lose no time, but set out for your brother's house."

"With all my heart. Forty-six years ago. Give me your hand, old friend; I thank you."

Dodypol had not, up to that moment, wiped an old man's tears from his eyes.

THOMAS CAMPION.

SOCIAL BARBARISMS.

HIRING A SERVANT.

THE world is very wicked, and has been so this long while; indeed nobody can recollect the time when it was good; but the wickedness does not seem equally divided, for, by all that is said, it would seem as if servants had monopolised more than their share of original sin and acquired wickedness. To hear the talk that goes on about them amongst respectable masters and mistresses, they seem to be a race of wicked Brownies, endowed with a special malignity against those whose household work they perform. Everybody who keeps a servant complains of their intense badness, with an emphasis proportioned to the number their illfortune obliges them to employ. It is a topic that "comes home to every one's business and bosom." If two men meet together, the chances are they will mention the weather; but if two women begin to talk, "servants" are the topic on which all their sympathies are warmed. To hear their comparisons of plagues, and their catalogues of evil deeds, is like looking through some great social oxyhydrogen microscope, and seeing the monsters which, unknown to us, have been besetting our parlour, kitchen, and hall, with the additional comfort of knowing that they are not safely imprisoned in a drop of water which we can swallow, and so make an end of, but are actually rampant and at liberty, most of us having one or more going tame about our house, and no visible mode of delivering ourselves! It is really an awful look-out, if only half that is said of them be true, and there is our own private experience to corroborate it in the sufferings we ourselves have endured at their hands, and it becomes directly a most indisputable fact, that servants are a very bad set indeed; could not, as a body, be much worse, on this side of the gallows. But then, as nothing is self-created, nor can continue in the world self-existent, there must be some cause whereby they come to this pass, and some tap root whence they are nourished, which keeps them going on at such a bad rate. Dean Swift warned his friend not to expect all the virtues under the sun for twenty pounds a year; but since his time it would seem as if the virtues had altogether declined "going

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out to service.' It sounds very grand in a sermon to hold vice in subjection; yet when it takes the shape of a domestic servant, it is a very bad handful indeed. When a man is very ill, he feels as if no human speech could give utterance to his portentous sufferings; but when the doctor comes and puts all the complaint in a few technical phrases, the dignity of the disease is departed; the patient, who fancied his sufferings a special infliction of Providence, finds them written in the "Chronicles of the Wise Men of Gotham," and the remedy, flourishing in the prosaic pages of the "Pharmacopoeia!" When an evil can be reduced to words, it is wonderful how manageable it looks. We do not profess to be very wise, but nevertheless that does not prevent our feeling tempted to say a few words on the present-condition-of-servants-question.

It does seem a solecism in the working of our Christianity, a barbarism in the heart of our civilisation, that two classes of human beings, masters and servants, subsisting in such intimate relation, so mutually dependent on each other, having such daily and hourly intercourse, should be entirely destitute of mutual regard; should be, in fact, in a state of mutual enmity. The masters putting no trust in the servants, and the servants looking on the master or mistress as their natural enemies, ready to take every advantage of them. All this apparent incorporation into one family is a mere matter of temporary convenience, and symbolical of no sort of friendly union. It is altogether a monstrous and unnatural state of things; no wonder it works so ill and produces such bitter complainings on both sides; for, to use a servant's own phrase, "there is no love lost between them! It is the total absence of everything like the love that ought to bind one human being to another, which lies at the root of the evil;-no amount of wages or of mutual-convenience principle will supply the place of that fellowfeeling which alone can make any sort of social contract or relationship between two parties work well. Certain virtues may be found very convenient in persons who have mutual dealings with each other; but the instant they are considered as nothing more than convenient qualities, and made marketable, they lose their worth, and become mere mechanical facilities for transacting business; they lose their vitality, and become mere petrifactions of what was once heavenly in its growth-a desecration of the most precious things, which works its own avenging.

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In the present relation between masters and servants, the master has this great advantage, that his staff of virtues are

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