Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/232

224. 'The earth,' my dear Ned, as a Greek sage has very well observed,—'the earth is the same every where!' and if I am asked for my home, I can point, like Anaxagoras, to Heaven!"

"'Pon my soul, you affect me!" said Ned, speaking thick, either from grief or the pressure of the belcher handkerchief on his mouth; "it is quite beautiful to hear you talk!"

"Bear up, my dear friend," continued Tomlinson, "bear up against your present afflictions. What, to a man who fortifies himself by reason and by reflection on the shortness of life, are the little calamities of the body? What is imprisonment, or persecution, or cold, or hunger?—By the by, you did not forget to put the sandwiches into my coat-pocket?"

"Hush!" whispered Ned, and he moved on involuntarily; "I see a man at the other end of the street."

"Let us quicken our pace," said Tomlinson; and the pair proceeded towards the river.

"And now," began Ned, who thought he might as well say something about himself, for hitherto Augustus, in the ardour of his friendship, had