BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

The next day, Monroe went with the artist to good Mr. Holworthy, and proposed to undertake the task of instructing a school.  The preliminaries were speedily arranged:  he was to receive a small weekly stipend, enough, with prudence, to meet his household expenses, and was to commence at once.  Both of the gentlemen accompanied him to the quarter where his labor was to begin.  A large room was hired in a rickety and forlorn-looking house; the benches for the scholars and a small desk and chair were the only furniture.  And such scholars!—­far different from the delicate, curled darlings of the private schools.  The new teacher found his labor sufficiently discouraging.  It was nothing less than the civilization of a troop of savages.  Everything was to be done; manners, speech, moral instincts, were all equally depraved.  They were to be taught neatness, respect, truth-telling, as well as the usual branches of knowledge.  It was like the task of the pioneer settler in the wilderness, who must uproot trees, drain swamps, burn briers and brambles, exterminate hurtful beasts, and prepare the soil for the reception of the seeds that are to produce the future harvest.  We leave him with his charge, while we attend to other personages of our story.

Mr. Sandford and his sister, upon leaving their house, took lodgings, and then began to cast about them for the means of support.  The money on which he had relied was gone.  His credit was utterly destroyed, and he had no hope of being reinstated in his former position.  The only way he could possibly be useful in the street was by becoming a curbstone broker, a go-between, trusted by neither borrower nor lender, and earning a precarious livelihood by commissions.  Even in that position he felt that he should labor under disadvantages, for he knew that his course had been universally condemned.  It was a matter of every-day experience for him to meet old acquaintances who looked over him, or across the street, or in at shop-windows, to avoid recognition.  And the half-patronizing, half-contemptuous nods he did receive were far worse to bear than downright cuts.

To a man out of employment, proscribed, marked, there is nothing so terrible as the impenetrability of the close ranks of society around him.  Every busy man seems to have found his place; each locks step with his neighbor, and the vast procession moves on.  Once out of the serried order, the unhappy wretch can never resume his position.  He finds himself the fifth wheel of a coach; there is nothing for him to do,—­no place for him at the bountiful board where others are fed.  He may starve or drown himself, as he likes; the world has no use for him, and will not miss him.  What Sandford felt, as he walked along the streets, may well be imagined.  If he had not been supported by the indomitable courage and assurance of his sister, he would have sunk to the level of a pauper.