I could not go into my mother’s room:  my heart swelled when I passed Within sight of the door.  Her portrait hung in the parlor, just over the place where she used to sit.  As I cast my eyes on it I thought it looked at me with tenderness, and I burst into tears.  My heart had long been seared by living in public schools, and buffeting about among strangers who cared nothing for me; but the recollection of a mother’s tenderness was overcoming.

I was not of an age or a temperament to be long depressed.  There was a reaction in my system that always brought me up again at every pressure; and indeed my spirits were most buoyant after a temporary prostration.  I settled the concerns of the estate as soon as possible; realized my property, which was not very considerable, but which appeared a vast deal to me, having a poetical eye that magnified everything; and finding myself, at the end of a few months, free of all farther business or restraint, I determined to go to London and enjoy myself.  Why should not I?—­I was young, animated, joyous; had plenty of funds for present pleasures, and my uncle’s estate in the perspective.  Let those mope at college and pore over books, thought I, who have their way to make in the world; it would be ridiculous drudgery in a youth of my expectations.

Well, sir, away to London I rattled in a tandem, determined to take the town gaily.  I passed through several of the villages where I had played the jack-pudding a few years before; and I visited the scenes of many of my adventures and follies, merely from that feeling of melancholy pleasure which we have in stepping again into the footprints of foregone existence, even when they have passed among weeds and briars.  I made a circuit in the latter part of my journey, so as to take in West End and Hempstead, the scenes of my last dramatic exploit, and of the battle royal of the booth.  As I drove along the ridge of Hempstead Hill, by Jack Straw’s castle, I paused at the spot where Columbine and I had sat down so disconsolately in our ragged finery, and looked dubiously upon London.  I almost expected to see her again, standing on the hill’s brink, “like Niobe all tears;”—­mournful as Babylon in ruins!

“Poor Columbine!” said I, with a heavy sigh, “thou wert a gallant, generous girl—­a true woman, faithful to the distressed, and ready to sacrifice thyself in the cause of worthless man!”

I tried to whistle off the recollection of her; for there was always Something of self-reproach with it.  I drove gayly along the road, enjoying the stare of hostlers and stable-boys as I managed my horses knowingly down the steep street of Hempstead; when, just at the skirts of the village, one of the traces of my leader came loose.  I pulled up; and as the animal was restive and my servant a bungler, I called for assistance to the robustious master of a snug ale-house, who stood at his door with a tankard in his hand.  He came readily to assist me, followed by his wife, with her bosom half open, a child in her arms, and two more at her heels.  I stared for a moment as if doubting my eyes.  I could not be mistaken; in the fat, beer-blown landlord of the ale-house I recognized my old rival Harlequin, and in his slattern spouse, the once trim and dimpling Columbine.