In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one of those pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my form.  Is he dead?  Is he a millionnaire?  Is he a bankrupt now?  He was an immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of the thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in reality not one-and-nine.

I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself with twiddling round the movable calendar.  But this pleasure wore off.  The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor.  His constant remark was, “When are you going to pay me that three-and-sixpence?  What sneaks your relations must be?  They come to see you.  You go out to them on Saturdays and Sundays, and they never give you anything!  Don’t tell me, you little humbug!” and so forth.  The truth is that my relations were respectable; but my parents were making a tour in Scotland; and my friends in London, whom I used to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but somehow never tipped me.  That term, of May to August, 1823, passed in agonies then, in consequence of my debt to Hawker.  What was the pleasure of a calendar pencil-case in comparison with the doubt and torture of mind occasioned by the sense of the debt, and the constant reproach of that fellow’s scowling eyes and gloomy, coarse reminders?  How was I to pay off such a debt out of sixpence a week? ludicrous!  Why did not some one come to see me, and tip me?  Ah! my dear sir, if you have any little friends at school, go and see them, and do the natural thing by them.  You won’t miss the sovereign.  You don’t know what a blessing it will be to them.  Don’t fancy they are too old—­try ’em.  And they will remember you, and bless you in future days; and their gratitude shall accompany your dreary after life; and they shall meet you kindly when thanks for kindness are scant.  O mercy! shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave me, Captain Bob? or the agonies of being in debt to Hawker?  In that very term, a relation of mine was going to India.  I actually was fetched from school in order to take leave of him.  I am afraid I told Hawker of this circumstance.  I own I speculated upon my friend’s giving me a pound.  A pound?  Pooh!  A relation going to India, and deeply affected at parting from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow! . . .  There was Hawker when I came back—­of course there he was.  As he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage.  He muttered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy.  My relation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, asked me with much interest about my progress at school, heard me construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was then engaged; gave me a God bless you, and sent me back to school; upon my word of honor, without so much as a half-crown!  It is all very