“This I found by much the better way.  Folks will always listen when the tale is their own, and of many who say they do not believe in fortune telling, I have known few on whom it had not a very sensible effect.  I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned from among servants and neighbors; and, indeed, people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose.  They dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for everyone is anxious to hear what he wishes to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine.  With a tolerably good memory, and some share of cunning, I succeed reasonably well as a fortune teller.  With this, and showing the tricks of that dog, I make shift to pick up a livelihood.

“My trade is none of the most honest, yet people are not much cheated after all, who give a few half-pence for a prospect of happiness, which I have heard some persons say, is all a man can arrive at in this world.  But I must bid you good day, sir; for I have three miles to walk before noon, to inform some boarding-school young ladies whether their husbands are to be peers of the realm or captains in the army; a question which I promised to answer them by that time.”

Harley had drawn a shilling from his pocket; but Virtue bade him to consider on whom he was going to bestow it.  Virtue held back his arm; but a milder form, a younger sister of Virtue’s, not so severe as Virtue, nor so serious as Pity, smiled upon him; his fingers lost their compression; nor did Virtue appear to catch the money as it fell.  It had no sooner reached the ground than the watchful cur (a trick he had been taught) snapped it up; and, contrary to the most approved method of stewardship, delivered it immediately into the hands of his master.

LVI.  RIENZI’S ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS. (221)

Mary Russell Mitford, 1786-1855.  She was the daughter of a physician, and was born in Hampshire, England.  At twenty years of age, she published three volumes of poems; and soon after entered upon literature as a lifelong occupation.  She wrote tales, sketches, poems, and dramas.  “Our Village” is the best known of her prose works; the book describes the daily life of a rural people, is simple but finished in style, and is marked by mingled humor and pathos.  Her most noted drama is “Rienzi.”  Miss Mitford passed the last forty years of her life in a little cottage in Berkshire, among a simple, country people, to whom she was greatly endeared by her kindness and social virtues. ###

I come not here to talk.  You know too well
The story of our thraldom.  We are slaves! 
The bright sun rises to his course, and lights
A race of slaves!  He sets, and his last beams
Fall on a slave; not such as, swept along
By the full tide of power, the conqueror led
To crimson glory and undying fame;
But base, ignoble slaves; slaves to a horde
Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords,
Rich in some dozen paltry villages;
Strong in some hundred spearmen; only great
In that strange spell,—­a name.