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188. We shall only say, as a proof of Paul's tenderness of heart, that when he took leave of the good matron, and bade "God bless her," his voice faltered, and the tears stood in his eyes,—just as they were wont to do in the eyes of George the Third, when that excellent monarch was pleased graciously to encore "God save the King!"

"I'll be hanged," soliloquized our hero, as he slowly bent his course towards the subtle Augustus,—"I'll be hanged (humph! the denunciation is prophetic,) if I don't feel as grateful to the old lady for her care of me as if she had never ill-used me. As for my parents, I believe I have little to be grateful for or proud of in that quarter. My poor mother, by all accounts, seems scarcely to have had even the brute virtue of maternal tenderness; and in all human likelihood I shall never know whether I had one father or fifty. But what matters it? I rather like the better to be independent; and, after all, what do nine-tenths of us ever get from our parents but an ugly name, and advice which, if we follow, we are wretched,—and if we neglect, we are disinherited?"

Comforting himself with these thoughts, which