Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/105

98 was a rogue. I am not at all prepared to deny it; but at any rate he did not prey on public credulity to the extent of other men of his stamp. I have collected this memoir of him, merely to show by what clumsy artifices our ancestors could be gulled. 2em

is a secret drawer in every heart,

⁠Wherein we lay our treasures one by one;

Each dear remembrance of the buried past;

⁠⁠Each cherished relic of the time that’s gone;

The old delights of childhood long ago;

⁠⁠The things we loved, because we knew them best;

The first discovered primrose in our path;

⁠⁠The cuckoo’s earliest note; the robin’s nest;

The merry hay-makings around our home;

⁠⁠Our rambles in the summer woods and lanes;

The story told beside the winter fire,

⁠⁠While the wind moaned across the window panes;

The golden dreams we dreamt in after years;

⁠⁠Those magic visions of our young romance;

The sunny nooks, the fountains and the flowers,

⁠⁠Gilding the fairy landscape of our trance;

The link which bound us later still to one

⁠⁠Who fills a corner in our life to-day,

Without whose love we dare not dream how dark

⁠⁠The rest would seem, if it were gone away;

The song that thrill’d our souls with very joy;

⁠⁠The gentle word that unexpected came;

The gift we prized, because the thought was kind;

⁠⁠The thousand, thousand things that have no name.

All these in some far hidden corner lie,

⁠⁠Within the mystery of that secret drawer,

Whose magic springs, though stranger hands may touch,

⁠⁠Yet none may gaze upon its guarded store.

“ here, John!” cried my wife one evening, as we were reading the “Times”&#8203;—&#8203;I absorbed in the debates, and she conning the supplement. “Here’s a chance of investing our money,” and she read as follows.

Any person possessing this capital can obtain 27¾ per cent. by the purchase of first-class long Leasehold Property, at low ground-rents, let to tenants of the highest respectability. Apply to Mr. Jollybold, on the premises, Arethusa