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 that might tend to reclaim the reprobates. As regards the monthly allowance being stopped, the reverend man had become every year a little fonder of his purse; he had hoped that his sons would have qualified themselves to take pupils, and thus achieve for themselves, as he phrased it, 'a genteel independence;' whilst they openly derided the career, calling it 'an admirable provision for the more indi-



gent members of the middle classes.' For which reason he referred them to their maternal uncle, a man of known and remarkable penuriousness.

The four ne'er-do-weels, foreseeing what awaited them at Jayasthal, deferred it as a last resource; determining first to see a little life, and to push their way in the world, before condemning themselves to the tribulations of reform.

They tried to live without a monthly allowance, and notably they failed; it was squeezing, as men say,