It is impossible to follow him through all his various strivings to do well:  he commenced a small-beer brewery, and the thunder turned it all into vinegar; he tried vinegar, and nothing on earth could make it sour; he opened a milk-walk, and the parish pump failed; he invented a waterproof composition—­there was fourteen weeks of drought; he sold his patent for two-and-sixpence, and had the satisfaction of walking home for the next three months wet through, from his gossamer to his ci-devant Wellingtons, now literally, from their hydraulic powers, “pumps.”

He lost everything but his heart!  And uncle Bucket was all heart! a red cabbage couldn’t exceed it in size, and, like that, it seemed naturally predestined to be everlastingly in a pickle!  Still it was a heart!  You were welcomed to his venison when he had it—­his present saveloy was equally at your service.  He must have been remarkably attached to facetious elderly poultry of the masculine gender, as his invariable salute to the tenants of his “heart’s core” was, “How are you, my jolly old cock?” Coats became threadbare, and defunct trousers vanished; waistcoats were never replaced; gossamers floated down the tide of Time; boots, deprived of all hope of future renovation by the loss of their soles, mouldered in obscurity; but the clear voice and chuckling salute were changeless as the statutes of the Medes and Persians, the price and size of penny tarts, or the accumulating six-and-eightpences gracing a lawyer’s bill.

Poor uncle Job Bucket’s fortune had driven “him down the rough tide of power,” when first and last we met; all was blighted save the royal heart; and yet, with shame we own the truth, we blushed to meet him.  Why? ay, why?  We own the weakness!—­the heart, the goodly heart, was almost cased in rags!

“Puppy!”

Right, reader, right; we were a puppy.  Lash on, we richly deserve it! but, consider the fearful influence of worn-out cloth!  Can a long series of unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade “like the baseless fabric of a vision” before the withering touch of poverty’s stern stamp?  Have you ever felt—­

“Eh? what?  No—­stuff!  Yes, yes—­go on, go on.”

We will!—­we blushed for our uncle’s coat!  His heart, God bless it, never caused a blush on the cheek of man, woman, child, or even angel, to rise for that.  We will confess.  Let’s see, we are sixty now (we don’t look so much, but we are sixty).  Well, be it so.  We were handsome once—­is this vanity at sixty? if so, our grey hairs are a hatchment for the past.  We were “swells once!—­hurrah!—­we were!” Stop, this is indecent—­let us be calm—­our action was like the proceeding of the denuder of well-sustained and thriving pigs, he who deprives them of their extreme obesive selvage—­vulgo, “we cut it fat.”  Bond-street was cherished by our smile, and Ranelagh was rendered happy by the exhibition of our symmetry.  Behold us hessianed in our haunts, touching the tips of well-gloved fingers to our passing friends; then fancy the opening and shutting of our back, just as Lord Adolphus Nutmeg claimed the affinity of “kid to kid,” to find our other hand close prisoner made by our uncle Bucket.