“Meanwhile, I have the honor to be, Sir,

“Your most obeajnt Survnt,

“Fitz-James de la Pluche.”

THE DIARY.

One day in the panic week, our friend Jeames called at our office, evidently in great perturbation of mind and disorder of dress.  He had no flower in his button-hole; his yellow kid gloves were certainly two days old.  He had not above three of the ten chains he usually sports, and his great coarse knotty-knuckled old hands were deprived of some dozen of the rubies, emeralds, and other cameos with which, since his elevation to fortune, the poor fellow has thought fit to adorn himself.

“How’s scrip, Mr. Jeames?” said we pleasantly, greeting our esteemed contributor.

“Scrip be ——­,” replied he, with an expression we cannot repeat, and a look of agony it is impossible to describe in print, and walked about the parlor whistling, humming, rattling his keys and coppers, and showing other signs of agitation.  At last, “Mr. Punch,” says he, after a moment’s hesitation, “I wish to speak to you on a pint of businiss.  I wish to be paid for my contribewtions to your paper.  Suckmstances is altered with me.  I—­I—­in a word, can you lend me —­L. for the account?”

He named the sum.  It was one so great that we don’t care to mention it here; but on receiving a cheque for the amount (on Messrs. Pump and Aldgate, our bankers,) tears came into the honest fellow’s eyes.  He squeezed our hand until he nearly wrung it off, and shouting to a cab, he plunged into it at our office-door, and was off to the City.

Returning to our study, we found he had left on our table an open pocket-book, of the contents of which (for the sake of safety) we took an inventory.  It contained—­three tavern-bills, paid; a tailor’s ditto, unsettled; forty-nine allotments in different companies, twenty-six thousand seven hundred shares in all, of which the market value we take, on an average, to be 1/4 discount; and in an old bit of paper tied with pink ribbon a lock of chestnut hair, with the initials M. A. H.

In the diary of the pocket-book was a journal, jotted down by the proprietor from time to time.  At first the entries are insignificant:  as, for instance:—­“3rd January—­Our beer in the Suvnts’ hall so precious small at this Christmas time that I reely muss give warning, & wood, but for my dear Mary Hann.  February 7—­That broot Screw, the Butler, wanted to kis her, but my dear Mary Hann boxt his hold hears, & served him right.  I DATEST Screw,”—­and so forth.  Then the diary relates to Stock Exchange operations, until we come to the time when, having achieved his successes, Mr. James quitted Berkeley Square and his livery, and began his life as a speculator and a gentleman upon town.  It is from the latter part of his diary that we make the following