and a certain small collection of the hardest facts. In respect of
ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is no
worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed's grandfather ever
put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life
he has never bred a single butterfly.
    The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of Mount
Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of spider, who
spun webs to catch unwary flies, and retired into holes until they were
entrapped. The name of this old pagan's God was Compound Interest. He lived for
it, married it, died of it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little
enterprise in which all the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he
broke something - something necessary to his existence; therefore it couldn't
have been his heart - and made an end of his career. As his character was not
good, and he had been bred at a Charity School, in a complete course, according
to question and answer, of those ancient people the Amorites and Hittites, he
was frequently quoted as an example of the failure of education.
    His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of going
out early in life, and whom he made a clerk in a sharp scrivener's office at
twelve years old. There, the young gentleman improved his mind, which was of a
lean and anxious character; and, developing the family gifts, gradually elevated
himself into the discounting profession. Going out early in life, and marrying
late, as his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and anxious-minded
son; who, in his turn, going out early in life and marrying late, became the
father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins. During the whole time
consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always
early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical
character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy
tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the
gratifying fact, that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete
little men and women whom it has produced, have been observed to bear a likeness
to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.
    At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below the level
of