Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/112

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PAUL CLIFFORD.

Mac Grawler's banishment on his account; and he endeavoured to atone for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was enabled to offer. These Mac Grawler (purely, we may suppose, from a benevolent desire to lessen the boy's remorse,) scrupled not to accept; and thus, so similar often are the effects of virtue and of vice, the exemplary Mac Grawler conspired with the unprincipled Long Ned and the heartless Henry Finish, in producing that unenviable state of vacuity, which now saddened over the pockets of Paul.

As our hero was slowly walking towards the Sage's abode, depending on his gratitude and friendship for a temporary shelter, one of those lightning flashes of thought which often illumine the profoundest abyss of affliction, darted across his mind. Recalling the image of the critic, he remembered that he had seen that ornament of the Asinæum receive sundry sums for his critical lucubrations.

"Why," said Paul seizing on that fact, and stopping short in the street—"Why should I not turn critic myself?"

The only person to whom one ever puts a ques-