“I was now too proud to work as a mere journeyman, and I commenced business for myself; but I began without capital, and a gourd of sorrow hung over me, while I stood upon sand.  I had some credit; but, as my bills became payable, I ever found I had put off, till the very day they became due, the means of liquidating them; then had I to run and borrow five pounds from one, and five shillings from another, urged by despair, from a hundred quarters.  My creditors grew clamorous; my wife upbraided me; I flew to the bottle—­to the bottle!” he repeated; “and my ruin was complete—­my family, business, everything, was neglected.  Bills of Middlesex were served on me, declarations filed; I surrendered myself, and was locked up in Whitecross Street.  It is a horrid place; the Fleet is a palace to it; the Bench, paradise!  But, sir, I will draw my painful story to a close.  During my imprisonment my wife died—­died, not by my hands, but from the work of them!  She was laid in a strange grave, and strangers laid her head in the dust, while I lay a prisoner in the city where she was buried.  My boy—­my poor Willie—­who had been always neglected, was left without father and without mother!  Sir! sir! my boy was left without food!  He forsook visiting me in the prison; I heard he had turned the associate of thieves; and from that period five years have passed, and I have obtained no trace of him.  But it is my doing—­my poor Willie!”

Here the victim of procrastination finished his narrative.  The storm had passed away, and the sun again shone out.  The man had interested me, and we left the gardens together.  I mentioned that I had to go into the city; he said he had business there also, and asked to accompany me.  I could not refuse him.  From the door by which we left the gardens, our route lay by way of Oxford Street.  As we proceeded down Holborn, the church bell of St. Sepulchre’s began to toll; and the crowd, collected round the top of Newgate Street, indicated an execution.  As we approached the place, the criminal was brought forth.  He was a young man about nineteen years of age, and had been found guilty of an aggravated case of housebreaking.  As the unhappy being turned round to look upon the spectators, my companion gave a convulsive shriek, and, springing from my side, exclaimed, “Righteous Heaven! my Willie! my murdered Willie!” He had proceeded but a few paces, when he fell with his face upon the ground.  In the wretched criminal he discovered his lost, his only son.  The miserable old man was conveyed, in a state of insensibility, to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where I visited him the next day:  he seemed to suffer much, and in a few hours he died with a shudder, and the word procrastination on his tongue.

THE TEN OF DIAMONDS.