 our offspring,
to thank them in the warmest and most uncompromising terms for their good
wishes. It may be expected that on the eve of a migration which will consign us
to a perfectly new existence,« Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five
hundred thousand miles, »I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such
friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I have said.
Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium of the learned
profession of which I am about to become an unworthy member, I shall endeavour
not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be safe to adorn. Under the temporary
pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate
liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances,
I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural
instincts recoil - I allude to spectacles - and possessing myself of a cognomen,
to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on that
score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the God of Day is
once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on the arrival of the
four o'clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath -
my name, Micawber!«
    Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and drank two
glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much solemnity:
    »One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and that
is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles has, on two
several occasions, put his name, if I may use a common expression, to bills of
exchange for my accommodation. On the first occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was
left - let me say, in short, in the lurch. The fulfilment of the second has not
yet arrived. The amount of the first obligation,« here Mr. Micawber carefully
referred to papers, »was, I believe, twenty-three, four, nine and a half; of the
second, according to my entry of that transaction, eighteen, six, two. These
sums, united, make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to
forty-one, ten, eleven and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do me the
favour to check that total?«
    I did so and found it correct.
    »To leave this metropolis,« said Mr. Micawber, »and my friend
