Mr. Toddleworth escorts her safely into Centre street, and directs her to the House of the Foreign Missions.

“Thank you! thank you!—­may God never let you want a shilling,” he says, bowing and touching his hat as Mrs. Swiggs puts four shillings into his left hand.

“One shilling, Madam,” he pursues, with a smile, “will get me a new collar.  A clean collar now and then, it must be said, gives a body a look of respectability.”

Mr. Toddleworth has a passion for new collars, regards them as a means of sustaining his respectability.  Indeed, he considers himself in full dress with one mounted, no matter how ragged the rest of his wardrobe.  And when he walks out of a morning, thus conditioned, his friends greet him with:  “Hi! ho!—­Mister Toddleworth is uppish this morning.”  He has bid his charge good morning, and hurries back to his wonted haunts.  There is a mysterious and melancholy interest in this man’s history, which many have attempted but failed to fathom.  He was once heard to say his name was not Toddleworth-that he had sunk his right name in his sorrows.  He was sentimental at times, always used good language, and spoke like one who had seen better days and enjoyed a superior education.  He wanted, he would say, when in one of his melancholy moods, to forget the world, and have the world forget him.  Thus he shut himself up in the Points, and only once or twice had he been seen in the Bowery, and never in Broadway during his sojourn among the denizens who swarm that vortex of death.  How he managed to obtain funds, for he was never without a shilling, was equally involved in mystery.  He had no very bad habits, seemed inoffensive to all he approached, spoke familiarly on past events, and national affairs, and discovered a general knowledge of the history of the world.  And while he was always ready to share his shilling with his more destitute associates, he ever maintained a degree of politeness and civility toward those he was cast among not common to the place.  He was ready to serve every one, would seek out the sick and watch over them with a kindness almost paternal, discovering a singular familiarity with the duties of a physician.  He had, however, an inveterate hatred of fashionable wives; and whenever the subject was brought up, which it frequently was by the denizens of the Points, he would walk away, with a sigh.  “Fashionable wives,” he would mutter, his eyes filling with tears, “are never constant.  Ah! they have deluged the world with sorrow, and sent me here to seek a hiding place.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

In which the very best intentions are seen to fail.