"Will it ever be said of me when my history is told that I spent forty thousand pounds a-year in advertising a single article? Would that it might be told that I had spent ten times forty thousand." It was thus that Robinson had once spoken to his friend Poppins, while some remnant of that five hundred pounds was still in his hands.

"But what good does it do? It don\'t make anything."

"But it sells them, Poppins."

"Everybody wears a shirt, and no one wears more than one at a time. I don\'t see that it does any good."

"It is a magnificent trade in itself. Would that I had a monopoly of all the walls in London! The very arches of the bridges must be worth ten thousand a-year. The omnibuses are invaluable; the cabs are a mine of wealth; and the railway stations throughout England would give a revenue for an emperor. Poppins, my dear fellow, I fancy that you have hardly looked into the depths of it."

"Perhaps not," said Poppins. "Some objects to them that they\'re all lies. It isn\'t that I mind. As far as I can see, everything is mostly lies. The very worst article our people can get for sale, they call \'middlings;\' the real middlings are \'very superior,\' and so on. They\'re all lies; but they don\'t cost anything, and all the world knows what they mean. Bad things must be bought and sold, and if we said our things was bad, nobody would buy them. But I can\'t understand throwing away so much money and getting nothing."

Poppins possessed a glimmering of light, but it was only a glimmering. He could understand that a man should not call his own goods middling; but he could not understand that a man is only carrying out the same principle in an advanced degree, when he proclaims with a hundred thousand voices in a hundred thousand places, that the article which he desires to sell is the best of its kind that the world has yet produced. He merely asserts with his loudest voice that his middlings are not middlings. A little man can see that he must not cry stinking fish against himself; but it requires a great man to understand that in order to abstain effectually from so suicidal a proclamation, he must declare with all the voice of his lungs, that his fish are that moment hardly out of the ocean. "It\'s the poetry of euphemism," Robinson once said to Poppins;—but he might as well have talked Greek to him.

Robinson often complained that no one understood him; but he forgot that it is the fate of great men generally to work alone, and to be not comprehended. The higher a man raises his head, the more necessary is it that he should learn to lean only on his own strength, and to walk his path without even the assistance of sympathy. The greedy Jones had friends. Poppins with his easy epicurean laisser aller,—he had friends. The decent Brown, who would so fain be comfortable, had friends. But for Robinson, there was no one on whose shoulder he could rest his head, and from whose heart and voice he could receive sympathy and encouragement.

From one congenial soul,—from one soul that he had hoped to find congenial,—he did look for solace; but even here he was disappointed. It has been told that Maryanne Brown did at last consent to name the day. This occurred in May, and the day named was in August. Robinson was very anxious to fix it at an earlier period, and the good-natured girl would have consented to arrange everything within a fortnight. "What\'s the use of shilly-shallying?" said she to her father. "If it is to be done, let it be done at once. I\'m so knocked about among you, I hardly know where I am." But Mr. Brown would not consent. Mr. Brown was very feeble, but yet he was very obstinate. It would often seem that he was beaten away from his purpose, and yet he would hang on it with more tenacity than that of a stronger man. "Town is empty in August, George, and then you can be spared for a run to Margate for two or three days."

"Oh, we don\'t want any nonsense," said Maryanne; "do we, George?"

"All I want is your own self," said Robinson.

"Then you won\'t mind going into lodgings for a few months," said Brown.

Robinson would have put up with an attic, had she he loved consented to spread her bridal couch so humbly; but Maryanne declared with resolution that she would not marry till she saw herself in possession of the rooms over the shop.

"There\'ll be room for us all for awhile," said old Brown.

"I think we might manage," said George.

"I know a trick worth two of that," said the lady. "Who\'s to make pa go when once we begin in that way? As I mean to end, so I\'ll begin. And as for you, George, there\'s no end to your softness. You\'re that green, that the very cows would eat you." Was it not well said by Mr. Robinson in his preface to these memoirs, that the poor old commercial Lear, whose name stood at the head of the firm, was cursed with a Goneril,—and with a Regan?

But nothing would induce Mr. Brown to leave his home, or to say that he would leave his home, before the middle of August, and thus the happy day was postponed till that time.

"There\'s many a slip \'twixt the cup and the lip," said Poppins, when he was told. "Do you take care that she and Polly ain\'t off to Aldersgate Street together."

"Poppins, I wouldn\'t be cursed with your ideas of human nature,—not for a free use of all the stations on the North Western. Go to Aldersgate Street now that she is my affianced bride!"

"That\'s gammon," said Poppins. "When once she\'s married she\'ll go straight enough. I believe that of her, for she knows which side her bread\'s buttered. But till the splice is made she\'s a right to please herself; that\'s the way she looks at it."

"And will it not please her to become mine?"

"It\'s about the same with \'em all," continued Poppins. "My Polly would have been at Hong Kong with the Buffs by this time, if I hadn\'t knocked the daylight out of that sergeant." And Poppins, from the tone in which he spoke of his own deeds, seemed to look back upon his feat of valour with less satisfaction than it had given him at the moment. Polly was his own certainly; but the comfort of his small menage was somewhat disturbed by his increasing family.

But to return. Robinson, as we have said, looked in vain to his future partner in life for a full appreciation of his own views as to commerce. "It\'s all very well, I daresay," said she; "but one should feel one\'s way."

"When you launch your ship into the sea," he replied, "you do not want to feel your way. You know that the waves will bear her up, and you send her forth boldly. As wood will float upon water, so will commerce float on the ocean streams of advertisement."

"But if you ran aground in the mud, where are you then? Do you take care, George, or your boat \'ll be water-logged."

It was during some of these conversations that Delilah cut another lock of hair from Samson\'s head, and induced him to confess that he had obtained that sum of five hundred pounds from her father, and spent it among those who prepared for him his advertisements. "No!" said she, jumping up from her seat. "Then he had it after all?"

"Yes; he certainly had it."

"Well, that passes. And after all he said!"

A glimmering of the truth struck coldly upon Robinson\'s heart. She had endeavoured to get from her father this sum and had failed. She had failed, and the old man had sworn to her that he had it not. But for what purpose had she so eagerly demanded it? "Maryanne," he said, "if you love another more fondly than you love me—"

"Don\'t bother about love, George, now. And so you got it out of him and sent it all flying after the rest. I didn\'t think you were that powerful."
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