if he had kept a record of his household expenses, as my friend Minimus does?  By the same token, he sometimes makes odd misentries, pious figurative fictions, in order to save the feelings of Mrs. Minimus, who is auditor-general and comptroller of the household.  And speaking of Belisarius, just fancy the hard fate of that gallant and decayed soldier!  Figure him left naked by the master whom he had served so well, crying out for a beggarly obolus!  Now this, you must know, was one of the least respectable coins of ancient times, being of about the value of one farthing sterling.  If the poor man had got his battered old helmet full of them, the ponderous alms would not have driven the wolf gaunt and grinning many paces from his squalid home,—­always admitting that he had any home, however squalid, to crawl into at sunset.  And how often he crouched and whined, white-headed and bare-headed all day, and did not get a lepton (which was, in value, thirty-one three hundred thirty-sixths of an English farthing) for his pains!  ’Tis such a pitiful story, that I am truly glad that the eminent German scholar, Nicotinus of Heidelberg, in his work upon the Greek Particle, has pretty clearly shown (Vol. xxviii. pp. 2850 to 5945) that the story may be regarded as a myth, illustrating the great, eternal, and universal danger of ultimate seediness, in which the most prosperous creatures live.  And just think of Napoleon squabbling about wine with Sir Hudson Lowe,—­the hero of Areola, without courage enough to hang himself.  Now you will notice, my dear friend, that he did not lose his dignity, until, with true British instinct, they took away his cash, and even opened his letters to confiscate his remittances.  He should have hidden the imperial spoons in a secret pocket.  He should, at least, have saved a sixpence wherewithal to buy Mr. Alison.

You may think, dear Don, that my views are exceedingly sordid.  I readily admit that all the philosophy and poetry, and I suppose I must add the morality, of the world are against me.  I know that it is prettier to turn up one’s nose at ready cash.  I have not found, indeed, that for the poetical pauper, in his proper person, the world, whether sentimental or stolid, has any deep reverence.  Will old Jacob Plum, who lives on an unapproachably high avenue,—­his house front and his heart of the same material,—­and who made two mints of money in the patent poudrette, come to my shabby little attic in Nassau Street, and ask me to dinner simply because “The Samos (Ill.) Aristarchean” has spoken with condescending blandness of my poems?  I know that Miss Plum dotes upon my productions.  I know that she pictures me to herself as a Corydon in sky-blue smalls and broad-brimmed straw hat, playing elegies in five flats, or driving the silly sheep home through the evening shades.  Now, whatever else I may be, I am not that.  I keep my refinement for gala-days; I do not shave, because I would save sixpences; I do not