Before returning from Liverpool, I had purchased the gentleman beggar’s acceptance from Balance.  I then inserted in the “Times” the following advertisement:  “Horatio Molinos Fitz-Roy.—­If this gentleman will apply to David Discount, Esq., Solicitor, St. James’s, he will hear of something to his advantage.  Any person furnishing Mr. R’s correct address, shall receive L1 1s. reward.  He was last seen,” &c.  Within twenty-four hours I had ample proof of the wide circulation of the “Times.”  My office was besieged with beggars of every degree, men and women, lame and blind, Irish, Scotch, and English—­some on crutches, some in bowls, some in go-carts.  They all knew him as “the gentleman,” and I must do the regular fraternity of tramps the justice to say, that not one would answer a question until he made certain that I meant the “gentleman” no harm.

One evening, about three weeks after the appearance of the advertisement, my clerk announced “another beggar.”  There came in an old man leaning upon a staff, clad in a soldier’s greatcoat, all patched and torn, with a battered hat, from under which a mass of tangled hair fell over his shoulders and half concealed his face.  The beggar, in a weak, wheezy, hesitating tone, said, “You have advertized for Molinos Fitz-Roy.  I hope you don’t mean him any harm; he is sunk, I think, too low for enmity now; and surely no one would sport with such misery as his.”  These last words were uttered in a sort of piteous whisper.

I answered quickly, “Heaven forbid I should sport with misery—­I mean and hope to do him good, as well as myself.”

“Then, sir, I am Molinos Fitz-Roy!”

While we were conversing candles had been brought in.  I have not very tender nerves—­my head would not agree with them—­but I own I started and shuddered when I saw and knew that the wretched creature before me was under thirty years of age, and once a gentleman.  Sharp, aquiline features, reduced to literal skin and bone, were begrimed and covered with dry fair hair; the white teeth of the half-open mouth chattered with eagerness, and made more hideous the foul pallor of the rest of the countenance.  As he stood leaning on a staff half bent, his long, yellow bony fingers clasped over the crutch-head of his stick, he was indeed a picture of misery, famine, squalor, and premature age, too horrible to dwell upon.  I made him sit down, sent for some refreshment which he devoured like a ghoul, and set to work to unravel his story.  It was difficult to keep him to the point; but with pains I learned what convinced me that he was entitled to some property, whether great or small there was no evidence.  On parting, I said, “Now, Mr. F, you must stay in town while I make proper inquiries.  What allowance will be enough to keep you comfortably?”

He answered humbly after much pressing, “Would you think ten shillings too much?”

I don’t like, if I do those things at all, to do them shabbily—­so I said, “Come every Saturday and you shall have a pound.”  He was profuse in thanks, of course, as all such men are as long as distress lasts.