The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-21


 desires for society that are natural to a gentleman and loved to assemble jolly travagant for the food and drink that they required was in the house.
 For a while fortune and content seemed to have come at last. Though his allow anee was so beggarly, his mother helped out whenever she could, and what with nights of song and merriment and with good breakfasts in bed next morning, MT. Stubbs was feeling soothed and placid when disaster came.
 The boarders-an overbearing, nasty, contemptible lot-refused to live in the house any longer. His mother could not pay her bills, because she had managed so badly with her money that she had none left, and, of course, he was too poor to part with the few paltry pounds that he had seved out of his allowance.
 So the whole thing went to smash again. His mother went back to Captain Waters He decided to be forgiving and heal the family feud by going there, too, but the wicked people shut the door in his face.
 It is true that they notified him that they would allow him 20 pounds year, but, of course, that cannot support a gentleman. He could not afford to de- scend to ordinary employment, but with in the limits laid on him by his sense of dignity he tried many ways to earn an honest living.
 He sold cigars andspocket handkerchiefs at corners. He was a billiard marker He was a director. in corporations in the panic years. He tried acting. He gave the authorities very useful information about people who broke the licensing laws
 At last he was forced by the stress of circumstances to become an attendant in the spunging house to which he had been taken after his iIl-starred marriage Misfortune followed him even there. He charged a gentleman seven shilltngs and sixpence for a glass of ale and bread and cheese when the charge of the house was only six shillings. For this slight in- fraction of the rules of hospitality the keeper had the meanness, first to deduct the IS pence from his wages, and then to throw him headlong into the street.
 The crowd that gathered evidently sym pathized with him, for they threw old vegetables and other missiles so furiously that lots of them hit MT. Stubbs himself. At last policeman came up and asked what the disturbance was, whereupon somebody said, "Bless you, sir, It's only Lord Cornwallis.'
 Move on Boots.'' said the callous and imprudent villain to MT. Stubbs.
 A gentleman who seemed nightly amused followed him and asked him why they called him Lord Cornwalls" and Boots"
 Sir said the ill-treated and injured stubbs, "I am an unfortupate officer of the North Bungay Fencibles, and I'll tell you willingly for pint of beer"
 Sure enough, he got the beer and told his story. The gentleman, who was what is called literary gentleman, took all the facts down and said that they were highly smorali
 I'm blest if I can see anything moral in en-" thought MT. Stubbs that even- ing, as he shlvered through tAe dirty alleys where he had his being. ''Tm sure that I ought to have been more lucky through life, being so very wide-awake, and yet here l am, without place or even a friend, starving on a beggarly 20 pounds year-not a single sixpence more, upon my honor!'
 Next Sundays one-page classic will be the Fair Maid of Perth,' by Sir Wal ter Scott.