The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-01-02
POOR DICK WARRINGTON.

He had been a gentleman once, and a scholar, who had won honors at Cam bridge, and was regarded as one of the best men in a college at that time un- usually rich in. promise. He had just seen one familiar companion of his in the old days pass into the New Law Ca- thedral, outside of whose gates he was lounging. The famous judge gave a glance at the disreputable loafer as he went by, but never recognized him :; if he had done so, he would probably have spoken, tor he was kindly-hearted man. But this very fact made the reprobate more bitter. If his old friend had cut him, there would have been some ground for declsiming against the hollowness of mankind; but Dick Warrington knew well enough that he himself had sunk out ot recognition, and one's own worthless ness is not so cheering subject of medi- tation as the worthlessness of other peo- pie.
 He pondered over neither, but only gazed moodily after the retreating figure of his old comrade, and then turned and sauntered into Long Acre. He was near ing his lodgings (they lay in dingy court half mile away), when it occurred to him that he had forgotten his mission. He had come out, with the idle good nature that seldom deserted him, to buy wine for his landladys husband-dying, the doctor said, of consumption. Dick s quarterly pay had just arrived from the Social Htayth, for he contributed to that shady serial, which is base imitation of the Family Herald, with none of it's vir tues and with all of its vices. The Fam- fly H<yaLd, indeed, has few vices, for it is an excellent periodical, and you may obtain from the editor for nothing advice on any earthly subject you choose to con- suit him upon, which advice will always be terse and definite and improving Also you may find essays on politics and social science therein if you are intellec- tual-essays that inspire one with wish that the editor of the FaniIy Herald were happily controlling the destinies of our empire instead of the too patriotic cliques which control it at present. While, as TOT the tales-but this is no place to rhapsodize, even over the Family Heyald.
 Warrington was on the staff of the Social HeartH, which is, as everybody knows, foolish and vulgar periodical, whose Criticism of Life" is not worth twopence. It paid very badly; but he contributed more or less to several other journals, of which BozO BeXs was the most respectable. It was a marvel how he, with his talent, could write badly enough to suit some of these editors. He said it took practice; but on the whole he succeeded admirably, and the stories and articles he furnished to the public showed, better than anything else, how far he had fallen. And yet there was battered remnant of nobility in him, hardly conscious of its own existence. As some old picture may lie long in dark lumber-room hidden behind great masses of rubbish, till kindly hand opens the shutter, less in the fresh air and the sun- shine, and disperses the piled up lumber, a chance touch shakes away the covering from the forgotten picture, scattsrs its dusty veil, and hardly dimmed by years, its beauty gleams into the light again-a Turner, a Velasquez. So the spiritual virtuoso may come across strange treas ure-trove, acts of chivalry, of seli-forget- fulness in the most unexpected quarter, dear to his heart as the Elzevir to the bibliomaniac. We were human Elxevirs once, may be; but, like the shabby vol- tunes the book-hunter filings aside with disdain, ve have been very much cut down.