Well, well, proceed in your own way, Jack.  I love my friend Belton as well as you can do; yet for the blood of me, I cannot but think, that soothing a man’s weakness is increasing it.

If it be a weakness, to be touched at great and concerning events, in which our humanity is concerned, said I, thou mayest be right.

I have seen many a man, said the rough creature, going up Holborn-hill, that has behaved more like a man than either of you.

Ay, but, Mowbray, replied the poor man, those wretches have not had their minds enervated by such infirmities of body as I have long laboured under.  Thou art a shocking fellow, and ever wert.—­But to be able to remember nothing in these moments but what reproaches me, and to know that I cannot hold it long, and what may then be my lot, if—­but interrupting himself, and turning to me, Give me thy pity, Jack; ’tis balm to my wounded soul; and let Mowbray sit indifferent enough to the pangs of a dying friend, to laugh at us both.

The hardened fellow then retired, with the air of a Lovelace; only more stupid; yawning and stretching, instead of humming a tune as thou didst at Smith’s.

I assisted to get the poor man into bed.  He was so weak and low, that he could not bear the fatigue, and fainted away; and I verily thought was quite gone.  But recovering, and his doctor coming, and advising to keep him quiet, I retired, and joined Mowbray in the garden; who took more delight to talk of the living Lovelace and levities, than of the dying Belton and his repentance.

I just saw him again on Saturday night before I went to bed; which I did early; for I was surfeited with Mowbray’s frothy insensibility, and could not bear him.

It is such a horrid thing to think of, that a man who had lived in such strict terms of—­what shall I call it? with another; the proof does not come out so, as to say, friendship; who had pretended so much love for him; could not bear to be out of his company; would ride an hundred miles on end to enjoy it; and would fight for him, be the cause right or wrong:  yet now, could be so little moved to see him in such misery of body and mind, as to be able to rebuke him, and rather ridicule than pity him, because he was more affected by what he felt, than he had seen a malefactor, (hardened perhaps by liquor, and not softened by previous sickness,) on his going to execution.

This put me strongly in mind of what the divine Miss Harlowe once said to me, talking of friendship, and what my friendship to you required of me:  ‘Depend upon it, Mr. Belford,’ said she, ’that one day you will be convinced, that what you call friendship, is chaff and stubble; and that nothing is worthy of that sacred name,

      ‘That has not virtue for its base.’

Sunday morning, I was called up at six o’clock, at the poor man’s earnest request, and found him in a terrible agony.  O Jack!  Jack! said he, looking wildly, as if he had seen a spectre—­Come nearer me!—­Dear, dear Belford, save me!  Then clasping my arm with both his hands, and rearing up his head towards me, his eyes strangely rolling, Save me! dear Belford, save me! repeated he.