Captain Flin and his wife are coming down the street in full gala attire. The pipe has vanished, but the card-case is still conspicuous amid the folds of a stiffly-starched embroidered handkerchief. They have been to see the Airlys, and have posted themselves up in all their affairs, and they are now en route to return the numerous visits that have been paid to their new house and furniture. If that could have been put upon rollers and trundled about to drop its card, it would have been quite an acceptable deputy, and would have saved a world of embarrassment to the unsophisticated couple.

There's a worthy man upon the walk at a short distance from them. He shuffles along with his heavy gait and home-spun dress, but there is a good honest frankness in his face that commends him to the passers-by. He has almost reached them, and is about to give some token of recognition, when they whisk across the street with averted looks. Didn't I tell you so, Captain Flin? The twelvemonth lacks a week, and Jerry Doolan has gone to his home with downcast mien and a heavy heart, because his old friend has purposely avoided him. Don't I know something of human nature, and how contaminating heaped-up coppers are? It is not every body that will bear even a moderate degree of wealth, particularly among those who have no other foundation to build their consequence upon. You are not wholly given over yet, Captain Flin, for there are evidences of self-accusings in your confession. "I'm sorry we cut poor Jerry, wife! It wouldn't hurt us to speak to him!" You'll come right again, man; we're sure of that. Mrs. Flin thinks it is well enough to show Jerry that their position in life is different from what it used to be, and she is afraid that if she condescends to notice him, even casually, it will be an excuse for him to send Duggy up to play with Sammy; and isn't she trying as hard as she can to make Sammy forgetful of the past, and mindful only of their present exaltation! The Captain acknowledges that it is a good idea to try to make something of Sammy, but he feels as if he is himself rather too old to remodel into a polished gentleman, after so long a probation of hardening and roughening too. He considers it a real trial to sit by with his great hands hanging by his side, while his wife talks to her grand acquaintances with a volubility that he never before imagined her possessed of; and he only misses still more the quid that used to keep his own tongue occupied. It is such a relief when the last call is made, and their steps are bent toward their own door. Mrs. Flin goes to her room to divest herself of some of her superfluous finery, and her husband quietly takes the opportunity to don his shaggy coat and light his pipe, and while she fancies him safe within their own walls, he is striding swiftly toward Jerry Doolan's to tell him what an old fool he made of himself in the morning, and to remove the heaviness from his friend's heart by an hour of familiar chat.

"Fact is, Jerry," says he, "wife may as well hang up her fiddle about me; can't make a whistle out of a pig's tail, man, I tell ye! She may fuss up the young'un as much as she's a mind to, but it'll be labor lost over an old chap like me. I feel more at home down here in the old place, and a plaguy sight more comfortable, than I do with all the nice fixins she's got together up yonder; and I'll tell you what it is, Jerry, we'll have many a smoke and talk yet, while the women folks do up their callin'. I've been once, and that's once too many, and it will take a taut pull to get me at that business again;" and the old sailor puffed away at his pipe, and congratulated himself in his firm resolution not to be whiffled about so easily as heretofore by his wife's ambitious whims.

A pretty time there was of it, though, when he reached home again, and Mrs. Flin pumped out of him where he had been. "It's all of no use, Jerold Flin," said she, "for me to be a strivin' and a strivin' to keep up the honor of the house, and you continually running back to your low associates." But seeing that her husband was not much affected by any of her appeals she turned her aspirations to the boy, whose life she almost teased out with her injunctions not to do this, for James Airly didn't, and to be sure to do that, because James Airly did. You need not exert yourself, Mrs. Flin, the boy's a "chip off the old block," and you can not make him otherwise. If you'll only try to implant within him good principles, and teach him that kindness of heart that always results in a true courtesy, it will benefit him more than all the fashionable notions you can gather from the external example of your neighbor Airly's children, I can assure you. This life is too noble and too dignified to be frittered away in vain attempts after a worthless outside. There is a genuine refinement and polish that comes from a strict adherence to the golden rule; this is what I would have you impress upon Master Sammy.